I've always been fascinated by the immense power of the sea, the dynamics of the waves, and the reflective surface. I wanted to create a scene in 3D, full of technical challenges. For inspiration, I chose the Giant's Causeway in Ireland; I was intrigued by the unique hexagonal formations.
The first part of the project was creating these formations. By employing some technical tricks, I managed to create the base, which I then extruded to form the 3D foundation for the simulation.
The simulation was a Guided Ocean simulation. First, I determined the appropriate scale, direction, speed, and intensity, which was visualized by the guide grid—this helped avoid running a heavy simulation right from the start.
As an optimization, I trimmed the bottom of the terrain, preventing particle generation where it wasn’t necessary for the simulation—only the upper ocean layer was simulated. This greatly increased the speed.
Once I had experimented with the simulation and was satisfied, I reduced the voxel size to achieve a more detailed simulation, particularly because visible collisions were also present in the scene.
Next came the whitewater simulations. I used the built-in tools for this and set the desired values. I definitely wanted to achieve the distinctive pattern caused by tensile (clustering) forces among the particles. I also added wind to the scene to create airborne particles.
Meshing the water surface was a challenge—I wanted to preserve as much detail from the simulation as possible, so I had to fine-tune the surfacing values carefully. For this scene, I used minimal blur and small particle size.
I rendered the whitewater both as particles and as VDB volumes to achieve the foam’s shine and volume. For the water surface material, I adjusted the reflection and refraction values to get the deep sea blue base color and the lighter blue-green where the mass thinned. I kept the underwater foam for additional detail in the render. As an extra, I added noise displacement to the water material to achieve even finer details.
The first part of the project was creating these formations. By employing some technical tricks, I managed to create the base, which I then extruded to form the 3D foundation for the simulation.
The simulation was a Guided Ocean simulation. First, I determined the appropriate scale, direction, speed, and intensity, which was visualized by the guide grid—this helped avoid running a heavy simulation right from the start.
As an optimization, I trimmed the bottom of the terrain, preventing particle generation where it wasn’t necessary for the simulation—only the upper ocean layer was simulated. This greatly increased the speed.
Once I had experimented with the simulation and was satisfied, I reduced the voxel size to achieve a more detailed simulation, particularly because visible collisions were also present in the scene.
Next came the whitewater simulations. I used the built-in tools for this and set the desired values. I definitely wanted to achieve the distinctive pattern caused by tensile (clustering) forces among the particles. I also added wind to the scene to create airborne particles.
Meshing the water surface was a challenge—I wanted to preserve as much detail from the simulation as possible, so I had to fine-tune the surfacing values carefully. For this scene, I used minimal blur and small particle size.
I rendered the whitewater both as particles and as VDB volumes to achieve the foam’s shine and volume. For the water surface material, I adjusted the reflection and refraction values to get the deep sea blue base color and the lighter blue-green where the mass thinned. I kept the underwater foam for additional detail in the render. As an extra, I added noise displacement to the water material to achieve even finer details.
