Build a tranquil ocean setting
BLENDER | PHOTOSHOP
Paul Hatton dives into the process for making a beautiful beach with the ocean centre stage
Creating ocean and beach scenes can be one of the toughest jobs around. There are just so many different components at work including displaced surfaces, numerous textures, foam requirements and vegetation, then there’s the not so small task of trying to get everything lit correctly.
This all contributes to a pretty daunting challenge. And if you start trying to visualise below the water’s surface then the challenge becomes infinitely harder.
Over the years I’ve worked on a number of different types of oceans with various software and renderers. I’ve found Chaos Phoenix one of the best options for generating realistic water surfaces, but we don’t have that plugin for Blender. A plugin is nice to have but not essential.
In essence, all oceans boil down to a displaced surface. The way that surface is displaced can take on various forms including geometry displacement or material displacement. The waves and how they move and respond to their surroundings is another factor that the natural eye already understands. It’s therefore not easy to trick the viewer and needs an accurate simulation in order to be genuinely believable.
In this tutorial we’re going to use the built-in Blender Ocean modifier, which is set up with a range of parameters perfectly suited for creating oceans. It’s by no means as comprehensive as Phoenix or other water simulators, but has enough in it to create pretty impressive results.
We’ll be generating a simple ocean with light waves that lap up towards the beach. To create the water and foam textures we’ll bake all that into a single texture and then map it onto the surface. This isn’t a workable option for animated water because the foam won’t animate accordingly, but it can create some realistic results for still images, especially with the more cartoon-style image we’re aiming for. Although the modifier does come with an associated texture, we won’t be utilising that on this occasion.
A number of the modifier properties can also be animated, which is great when generating oceans for videos. With careful attention it’s possible to create highly believable results without too much work.
I’m going to guide you through the Ocean modifier one step at a time to make sure you have all the knowledge required to fine-tune the results, plus all the necessary settings to create an ocean just like the one in the main image. Let’s make a spla
