Your CG problems solved
Roger Fielding, Kettering
Pro artists tackle your queries
Creating a convincing ocean surface is one of those tasks that seems like there ‘should’ be an easy way of doing it. However, the complexity of water movement, especially when extrapolated over large areas, makes this process a challenge.
For users of Cinema 4D thankfully, the task of creating an ocean has just become a lot easier. Insydium, the makers of the excellent X-particles for Maxon’s Cinema 4D, have recently added and upgraded their water toolset for X-particles. One of the key additions is an ‘xpocean’ object that simply adds an object into a scene that simulates an ocean.
Job done? Well, not quite. The ‘xpocean’ object is certainly very handy, with it being fast, very customisable, and it creates elements such as a Vertex map which can be used to create foam for more advanced users. The ‘xpocean’ object is so simple that it puts into relief the caveats about the scene and shot construction when dealing with large bodies of water.
Even an optimised ocean creation object such as xpocean can slow down quickly when creating a scene that has a distant horizon. So if that’s the nature of the shot, make one ‘xpocean’ object that is close to the camera, and then for further away, use another ‘xpocean’ object that
has a lower mesh density and therefore won’t slow down the scene as much.
Atmospherics can also play a part, and the creation of a fog or VDB cloud can soften the horizon, giving a convincing sense of depth.
If the scene needs to show an object like a boat moving through it, be mindful that for contact splashes and the like, an actual simulation may need to be created, as the ‘xpocean’ is a geometry object. X-particles comes with a wide range of tools for creating realistic water collisions which will enhance the scene, but this means that the scene is an assembly of parts rather than just the interaction of a ‘boat’ and ‘water’.
Understanding these limitations will make scenes much more efficient, both in development and render. Now that Cinema 4D users have the ‘xpocean’ object as an integral part of one of Cinema 4D’s most essential plugins, it means that the potential headache of ocean creations is now a creative opportunity. Let’s take a quick look at how to use it.