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Adding a preview plane to an ocean

Lesson 4: Creating an ocean effect

Floating objects

 

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Fluid Effects > Lesson 4: Creating an ocean effect > 

Modifying ocean attributes

In the next steps, you will modify ocean shader settings to make the waves bigger.

To modify attributes for the ocean shader

1. Render the current frame to see what the ocean looks like before you modify the ocean shader attributes. On the Status line, click the render current frame icon.

   

   

2. Select the preview plane or the ocean plane (it doesn’t matter which one), and in the Attribute Editor, click the oceanShader1 tab.
3. Open the Ocean Attributes section and change the following values:
   • Num Frequencies: 12
   • Wave Length Max: 40

   Num Frequencies controls the number of frequencies between minimum and maximum wave lengths. Increasing this value results in a more textured look on the water surface.

   Wave Length Max controls the maximum length of waves in meters. Longer wave lengths make bigger waves.

   

4. Play the simulation to see the effect of your changes on the displacement of the ocean waves.
5. Stop the playback and go to the start of the playback range.
6. Render the current frame.

   

7. Make the tops of the waves form crests by adjusting the Wave Peaking graph in the Attribute Editor.

   Wave Peaking controls the amount of crest formation for waves across the range of wave frequencies. It simulates a side-to-side sloshing of waves, as opposed to an up-down motion. Wave Peaking is only applied to turbulent waves (where Wave Turbulence is not zero).

   Click on the graph to create the position markers shown in the next illustration.

   

   Where the wave frequency is lower, the waves peak more.

8. Render the current frame.

   

   The tops of the waves now crest slightly.

   Notice the white highlights on the ocean. These are specular highlights caused by the light hitting the water.

9. Make the highlights dimmer so they don’t pop out as much, and bigger. Open the Specular Shading section and change the following settings:
   • Specularity: 0.45
   • Eccentricity: 0.1

   Specularity controls the brightness of the specular highlights. Higher values create brighter highlights.

   Eccentricity controls the size of the specular highlights. Higher values create bigger highlights.

10. Render the current frame.