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water animation
- Thread starter oldcoot
- Start date
I haven't animated waves for a long time but the basic idea goes something like this:
1- create a terrain,lower it in the y axis till it is fairly flat and in the terrain editor change the map to a fractal image.
2- Still in the terrain editor set a new keyframe (say at 50 frames if your animation will be 25 f.p.s. thus giving you 2 seconds) and in this keyframe change the pattern of the fractal map to another variation of the same fractal displacemnt map as before (ie perlin hills or whatever you chose 1st).
3- keep adding 2 second (or however long you want) keyframes (making sure you keep them evenly spaced if you choose a longer or shorter delay between morphs) for as long as you want.
4- go back to the main display and assign a good water material to the terrain.
5- render.
Bryce is very good at morphing over time materials and images used to drive displacements in terrains so with just these few easy steps Bryce will morph between your original fractal terrain and then onto and through all the various fractals you assigned over the duration of the animation.
To make the animation flow smoothely and more realistically at each keyframe you can edit the animation curves in the terrain editors upper left area. The curves will be linear lines but if you add a point a few frames after and before each fractals keyframe then you can shape the acceleration properties of each morph to ease out and ease in to each morph (the curve should look a little like an italic 's' shape (starts off flat at the bottom but cruves up to an angle of 45 degrees until near the top when it should flatten off again to flat just as it goes into the next morph.)
The key here from my very sketchy ideas is to experiment a bit with parameters until you get what you think is acceptable. As for big rollers... I don't know cos I havent needed to fiddle to get them but maybe you'd have to settle for making a second terrain with just a thick white line on it to get a tall wave-thing and moved it accross the animation. Don't know how crap that might look but it's up to you.
Good luck and perhaps you could let me know if you run into any difficulties or when you render out an animation... i'd love to see it.
1- create a terrain,lower it in the y axis till it is fairly flat and in the terrain editor change the map to a fractal image.
2- Still in the terrain editor set a new keyframe (say at 50 frames if your animation will be 25 f.p.s. thus giving you 2 seconds) and in this keyframe change the pattern of the fractal map to another variation of the same fractal displacemnt map as before (ie perlin hills or whatever you chose 1st).
3- keep adding 2 second (or however long you want) keyframes (making sure you keep them evenly spaced if you choose a longer or shorter delay between morphs) for as long as you want.
4- go back to the main display and assign a good water material to the terrain.
5- render.
Bryce is very good at morphing over time materials and images used to drive displacements in terrains so with just these few easy steps Bryce will morph between your original fractal terrain and then onto and through all the various fractals you assigned over the duration of the animation.
To make the animation flow smoothely and more realistically at each keyframe you can edit the animation curves in the terrain editors upper left area. The curves will be linear lines but if you add a point a few frames after and before each fractals keyframe then you can shape the acceleration properties of each morph to ease out and ease in to each morph (the curve should look a little like an italic 's' shape (starts off flat at the bottom but cruves up to an angle of 45 degrees until near the top when it should flatten off again to flat just as it goes into the next morph.)
The key here from my very sketchy ideas is to experiment a bit with parameters until you get what you think is acceptable. As for big rollers... I don't know cos I havent needed to fiddle to get them but maybe you'd have to settle for making a second terrain with just a thick white line on it to get a tall wave-thing and moved it accross the animation. Don't know how crap that might look but it's up to you.
Good luck and perhaps you could let me know if you run into any difficulties or when you render out an animation... i'd love to see it.
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