August 2010: Nautor Club Swan 42

[spam_septic]

I may try to do a Swan 42 club racer. I will have to play it by ear and see how much time I have... my better half was extremely patient and supportive with the many nights on end that I worked from 6pm to 3am (after 10hrs/day at my day job) on the July contest. I don't want to take advantage... I could also probably use some sleep ;).

http://a.imageshack.us/img821/5958/kcswan42.jpg (http://img821.imageshack.us/i/kcswan42.jpg/)

[mariofurtado]

great idea,
this comp for a render
would be great too.

[spam_septic]

I'm very interested in trying to render out the water (along with the bow wave, wake and spray). Just need to figure out how to do that.... I suspect that Softimage isn't the best tool for the job. I'm open to suggestions.

[DjVoyager]

That's gonna be cool!

[Dean]

Nice idea, looking forward to see your progress!

[mariofurtado]

There must be a water preset in xsi,
Then make a disp map and it's almost done.

[spam_septic]

@Mario: I can easily do water for a still image, but I want to animate the waves, wake and spray. I know there is the aa_ocean plugin, which makes great gerstner waves, but I'm not sure how to add the bow wave and wake. If there is an animatable water preset in XSI, I have no idea where to find it or how to use it.

@DT: Does something like this exist? If so, it would be a very welcome training kit! That and perhaps a kit on how to do skies and clouds. Call it a natural environments training kit or something like that. That would be fantastic!! I'm drooling just thinking about it!

[Gadgetfun]

Hi spam_septic, You can use realflow 5.0 for that, they have now Hybrido. Its generating water, spray and mist. very cool.

[spam_septic]

Hmmm... maybe I can use the demo. I'll have to see if there are any Hybrido tutorials out there. Thanks for the tip.

[spam_septic]

Here is the progress so far on the Swan 42.


http://www.vimeo.com/14075598

[Dean]

Looks mighty fine to me ! great work so far dude!

[spam_septic]

Thanks! Of course, like an idiot, I hit the simulate button in realflow and deleted my data last night. Looks like I have to re-run the simulation...ack! But, what the heck, maybe I'll add some spray this time! :)

[DjVoyager]

Great progress! This would be the perfect project to test out Hybrido simulation.

[spam_septic]

Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck figuring out how to use Hybrido. I'm just using a RealWave with statistical spectrum and gerstner modifiers and an object emitter on the hull for the splashes (which I'm currently running). I'm not a RealFlow expert. I just picked up the RF5 demo and worked through the RF4 tutorials here on DT, filling in the blanks where the versions were different.

Do you have any good references for learning Hybrido? I tried to set up a grid domain and emitter, but didn't really have much luck getting it to do what I wanted it to. I found the RealFlow5 documentation to be somewhat less than helpful.

Otherwise, I may try to add some additional environmental details like mist, etc. using ICE in SoftImage, rather than going the Hybrido route.

[DjVoyager]

I know what you mean. Those demo clips for RF5 are mouth watering (pun intended).
DT has received many requests for Hybrido so I'm sure we'll get some training soon, not sure if it'll be this month. Will keep an eye out for any good instructions.

[spam_septic]

Another question for anyone that knows RealFlow... is there a way to tile a RealWave? I had to make the wave grid very large (150x150) so that I could have some ocean in the background to avoid exposed edges, but I don't really need the whole area to be unique. From looking at the wave itself, it appears that it *would* be tileable... If I could reduce the overall size of the grid it would really help, because the simulation times are already over 24 hours for a 30 second scene. Also, it would be nice to turn up the detail on the waves a bit without pushing the simulation time up even higher. Hypermeshes are gone in RF5, so I can't just add detail in the foreground and use a coarser mesh for the background (which will be out of focus anyway).

My other problem is that I think I must be close to running out of memory or something (odd, since I have 16GB of RAM), b/c RF won't render a foam texture on a grid this size without seizing up (even at only a texture size of 64). It will only simulate if I turn off texture generation.

[spam_septic]

Finally got around to putting up some progress pictures....

http://a.imageshack.us/img838/3073/progress2f.jpg (http://img838.imageshack.us/i/progress2f.jpg/)

http://a.imageshack.us/img84/8886/progress1.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/i/progress1.jpg/)

[bianconero90]

Looks really good!

Keep it up!

[spam_septic]

Thanks! Here are a couple quick renders too.

http://a.imageshack.us/img251/3968/progressc.jpg (http://img251.imageshack.us/i/progressc.jpg/)

http://a.imageshack.us/img718/1427/progressd.jpg (http://img718.imageshack.us/i/progressd.jpg/)

I still need to add some details, texture the decks and sails, maybe add some flags, etc.

[Dean]

looks really nice !!!

[spam_septic]

Last two for the night. Really had fun doing the lines through the capstans and the knots. Need to work on the lighting, though. Things look a little blown out and you can barely see the grippy parts of the deck.

http://a.imageshack.us/img713/5525/progressf.jpg (http://img713.imageshack.us/i/progressf.jpg/)

http://a.imageshack.us/img837/82/progresse.jpg (http://img837.imageshack.us/i/progresse.jpg/)

[spam_septic]

It has stealth sails. ;) J/k... I hadn't modeled the mast at the time of that animation. It is there now though, along with all of the shround lines.

[DjVoyager]

Looks awesome!

Btw, any luck with RF? I had a chance to play with Hybrido a bit and kind of get the concept but not 100% sure when it comes to rendering. For one, all the clips online showcasing Hybrido are simulation in RF and not the 3rd party rendered stuff, ya know. I'm more interested in seeing some render results for mist and foam in Maya.

[Anitricks]

nice.. this really freaking awesome work..... the detail, the reflection in the water is magnificent...... love the work on the boat deck...looks like a real boat to me.... awesome work man..... keep it up.... please also teach me how to too.....

[spam_septic]

Thanks! The waves were done in RealFlow using a RealWave with statistical spectrum and gerstner modifiers. I used the Mental Ray mia_material for the water surface.

On the decks, I created a texture mask where the grippy areas of the deck would be and then used that mask to alter the reflection and color of the hull in those areas. I just used a procedural fabric texture to create the pattern and used the mask again to limit it to the appropriate areas.

I would love to add a figure to man the helm, but I won't have time for that. Instead, I'll just give the boat a clever name like, "Phantom," or something like that ;)

e.

[spam_septic]

Update: My final render has been chugging along for about 24 hrs now. It is a little over halfway, so it should be done some time tomorrow.

[spam_septic]

Here is my final submission, "Phantom."

Tools:
Softimage 2010
RealFlow5
Photoshop
Illustrator

Experience:
Intermediate


http://www.vimeo.com/14597931

[stwert]

Wow, simply excellent work! The only other things I could wish to see are a bit of sea spray and some fluttering in the sails, but I really love the render.

[spam_septic]

Thanks! Hehe... me too! I tried to do both, but quickly figured out that I couldn't learn all of those new skills in one short month. I'm hoping there will be some new RealFlow training that touches on that. I still may try to figure out how to do the fluttering with Syflex too.

[Gadgetfun]

Thats just amazing! really like your model and render quality.