Large Scale Oceans in Blender with FOAM!

In this tutorial I'll show you how to create large scale oceans in Blender with foam. This version has been updated for Blender 2.93 and includes a new technique for layering the ocean bakes.
Alternative HDRI (instead of using built in sky texture):
www.dropbox.com/s/w753siebib8...
gofile.io/?c=eAdvAV
Follow me:
Instagram: / dylanneill3d
Twitter: / dylanneill
0:00 Intro
0:30 Initial setup
2:21 Ocean swell setup
5:22 Swell ocean modifier settings
12:50 Baking the ocean modifier
13:38 Small waves ocean modifier settings
16:33 Foam settings and bake
20:59 Ocean baking bugs
21:57 Render scene setup
23:26 Ocean render geometry
26:47 Render settings
29:06 Ocean shader with swell
35:07 Adding detail waves to shader
37:25 Fixing black spots in render
38:44 Camera animation
42:51 Adjusting the sky and lighting
44:24 Foam shader
50:21 Outro

[@DylanNeill3D]

For everyone experiencing issues with the ocean not animating, you have to go through all the image nodes in the shader and enable the "Auto Refresh" option. Sorry about that. I had initially left it disabled so the viewport playback would be fast for the camera move section then forgot to mention that you need to enable this option afterwards around the 43 minute mark in the tutorial.

[@angelovincenzofinocchiaro3758]

Hi Dylan, as many have already stated this is the best tutorial on the subject. Is there any chance you could bring it to the next level adding the boat moving in the water generating ripples and a foam trail? I already had great results following it, adding those features would make it the ultimate tutorial on this matter. Thanks again for sharing this with everyone.

[@velvey35]

Hello! Thank you for your tutorial, it's really helpful! But I'm new to learning blender and I have a little difficulty. On Mac the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+R didn't work (it's 25:23 on video). Can you tell me please what these keyboard shortcuts turn on or how else I can enable this?

[@comradeboris2335]

@@velvey35 try command+r or just google how to add loop cuts

[@DECODEDVFX]

FYI you can continue keyframed movements infinitely by hovering over the timeline and pressing shift+E > linear extrapolation. Much faster than messing about with modifiers in the graph editor.

[@Theaddekalk]

yup so much faster and no time consuming lol

[@DylanNeill3D]

Ooo great tip!

[@djbenima]

Was looking for that comments. I was pretty sure we could extrapolate keyframes

[@Arcanaa]

God bless you sir

[@vuk8550]

Do you have any tips on how to loop the ocean?

[@DylanNeill3D]

Hey everyone, if you're using Blender 3.4 then the Separate RGB and Combine RGB Nodes mentioned around 31:45 are now called Separate Color and Combine Color

[@ClintMoody]

Maybe I missed something. Why do we need to switch the green and blue channels here?

[@radicalgeckosuperstar9885]

Thank you so much! I almost gave up, this comment was a life saver🎉

[@mycroft16]

@@ClintMoody This, I'm extremely curious of the purpose underlying this.

[@380rabbits4]

thanks i am happy that you said that becuase i was getting confused👍

[@380rabbits4]

i can not find the mix color either i have tried add shader and mix shader but they dont work

[@antonshakhovnin]

Seriously, your Blender tutorials are probably the best on this platform. Heaps of info, no stalling, straight to tthe point, great stuff!

[@NoobDude929]

its not straigt to the point. 50 fcking minutes of random shi. i watched a 2 minute tutorial and made the same thing

[@Garpocalypse]

This is the closest i've seen to a perfectly paced blender tutorial. Nice work.

[@jacquelinelmiller]

Oh how awesome! Love your new version! What a fantastic tutorial - thank you so much for sharing your art!

[@DylanNeill3D]

Hey everyone, one HUGE thing I forgot to mention in this tutorial is to set your camera focal length to something like 24mm. Sky and ocean will look 200% better. Did it in the last version too. Just forgot this time.

[@undeadduck9064]

At 33:40 the waves aren't showing up could someone help

[@getspike2716]

@@undeadduck9064 In the Shader editor for the ocean texture, on the image texture node where you imported the image texture click "Auto refresh" under where the frame count is. this is for blender 2.94.3

[@getspike2716]

Please any help with baking the texture as a loop. I know how to make ocean modifier loop with 2 modifiers perfect. but when i bake mod one and mod 2 to two separate folders and playback the loop is no longer perfect. Is the only way to do it in post? i.e. in DaVinci after render? Any help with this will be forever grateful

[@ezggtv6504]

@@undeadduck9064 have you solved in any way? They are showing in material preview but not in render view

[@Ab_obla]

@@getspike2716 2.94 😂!?

[@ifthis_]

Just spent the night going through this, and the morning waiting for it to render. Super stoked with the outcome. Thanks for this Dylan! 🌊

[@HelicopterSchool]

You are such a good teacher. I learn so much from watching and you do everything at just the right speed and detail level. Very much appreciated!

[@LinhNguyen-yn1rb]

Thanks a million, times. There are wonderful tutorials. I just learned Blender for 2 months. been paid for the course but nothing has been done, this only one so far, so happy thanks again.

[@clausbohm9807]

Thank you so much for the update, much better than the original! It would be nice to see an AE tutorial on the trail effect. Your attention to detail, explanation and pace of the tutorial makes you stand out to the rest! You are really good at tutoring!

[@piker78]

great tutorial! literally saved me at work today, it was either export everything to Unreal spend several more hours fixing shaders, and do it with Waterline - or do it straight away in Blender, thanks for this, really helpful :)

[@zedfirenze]

Great tutorial man. Thank you! This really sped up my project heavily in that before I was trying to use a really large ocean modifier which made my renders 10x longer.

[@SkyrimBeast]

Thank you so much for this Dylan. I had been pouring over water videos for a few hours. Yours was the only one that suited what I needed to do. Sub'd

[@blendercinematic]

Dylan, thank you so much for producing such a valuable and detailed tutorial. I was really surprised at the result as I couldn't notice any tiling whatsoever in the ocean and it looked so real. I used your Ocean method combined with Flip fluids to create a cinematic animation of Quinjet rising out of Ocean on my channel. Thanks again and keep innovating.

[@fatalframes]

I followed your earlier tutorial just a few days back and made the ocean Thanks:)

[@jsj01999]

Super excited to relearn this one!

[@giacomo4992]

Amazing Tutorial. Even as a new unexperienced blender user easy to follow and incorporate into other projects 👌🏾

[@KD9-37]

okay this ones even better! THANK YOUUU!

[@sila2515]

Thank you! Like the first tutorial. Now will spend my sunday with this :)

[@lucascolombovideos]

Amazing. This is beyond a tutorial, it's a Blender life change. Not only a perfect and complete ocean, but how to do it light for amost any pc. Thank you so much.

[@Discostu]

Great tutorial, i enjoyed it greatly, keep up the good work

[@domoticaindustrial5756]

Mr. Dylan, you are very kind to share your knowledge, from my heart, I thank you for that, cordial greetings from Mexico!

[@hansflammenwerfer6650]

Thank you so much for this tutorial, I'm going to use this Ocean for many projects !

[@user-ps6mj8pv4h]

Underrated Blender Sensei right here!

[@AtrusDesign]

A LOT of useful things here! Thank you very much!

[@Andrew-ul2mt]

Great tutorial, much appreciated.

[@manavnayyar]

Great Tutorial! I really enjoyed it.

[@MJ-zh6jp]

I have been waiting for this one for 3 months lets gooo

[@Achievers724]

God bless you man thanks for this keep doing great work

[@aldoileanumeliber]

Thanks for this amazing tut and all that jazz

[@PDXDT]

This was a perfect tutorial. Checked all the boxes.

[@guilhermenaco]

Thank you! You are great on teaching and your skills are amazing!

[@_digitaldream]

As for me, everything is simple and clear. Thank you

[@creeyuwan2733]

Thank you so much, Dylan! I will definitely use it. Greetings!

[@davide3144]

Great! Clear and pleasant speaking.

[@tallyman138]

Wow! By far the best and most detailed ocean tutorial I've seen so far. Thanks a lot! One remark: I also often had to struggle with triangular fans in circular objects. One way to get rid of it is to delete the triangles and fill the gap with 'Grid Fill' to get quads...

[@agamonal]

where have you been? we need more of your tutorials !!!! best blender ocean ever !!!

[@brianbuckman6908]

Awesome tutorial, thank you very much :)

[@oskarankarudd]

Thanks for sharing the tutorial, will have to try this!

[@comicsands9719]

finally you're back

[@robinmountford5322]

The only invisible tile solution I have found after hours of experimenting and searching. One thing that stumped me that I may have missed whilst watching this video is I couldnt get the final result to animate. If anyone has the same problem, you have to click auto refresh on your image nodes.

[@maka2370]

Great tutorial!! Thank You!!

[@mwsiviero]

Oh man this guy is living legend!!!

[@currenluna]

Great tutorial. Thanks!

[@ethanwashoe5868]

thanks for the tutorial im working on a light house right now and this ocean works well with it!

[@yangjinwhan5835]

amazing Tutorial!!!!

[@mooseg12]

I'd consider myself a blender noob and I still managed to follow this, amazing tutorial, thank you!

[@haideralisheikh5361]

Nice tutorial 👍

[@DerpyPossum]

Helpful for ocean liner renders. :)

[@calebjlee2685]

This man is a legend

[@venomironx]

Very good! Checking cyclic in the image textures solved the issue of the ocean not animating in the Render layer. Looks really good! Thanks so much Dylan

[@zeyadhani2091]

Hey can you clarify? Because I checked Cyclic in the image node but nothings seems to happen, Ive been struggling to get the swell to show, all I see is a flat reflection

[@venomironx]

@@zeyadhani2091 I was getting an issue where the ocean was moving, it was static. But it was showing, it just wasnt animated. Then I checked auto-refresh and cyclic in all three image textures (swell, detail and foam) in the shader editor. Now it moves..

[@cardless5777]

OMG you litarally just saved my mood for the Day!! Thank you so much!!!

[@siemensohm]

great tutorial. thank you

[@ChrisChoiThird]

Thanks for your tutorial.

[@micmacha]

How the heck did I miss that there's an ocean _modifier_ now? Thank you!

[@satisfyingsim2110]

Very nice!

[@broke3039]

thank you for this!!

[@Rico5568]

it is very helpfull for me. thanks

[@SW-vg9gx]

Dylan Neill, Thanks so much for the tutorial. Your pacing and explanation of all the sliders are super helpful. For recommendations I would love to see this ocean fit into a larger scene and to see a final render. Also a cycles / redshift direct workflow comparison. ie. trying to set up a scene in both with cycles and redshift with materials and lights to get a similar final render. I was recently watching your blender redshift setup video which was super useful and the GITS one. *Any additional dynamics/vfx tutorials would be great. Especially where interactions between models and the effects are happening. It's usually a bit confusing to get that stuff to work. Like smoke/water/wind/fire/other particles interacting with materials or each other in what would be a fairly logical scene. Like...boat on water is on fire and wind is blowing the smoke. That one may be a bit heavy...but yeah, that would be useful. The nicest thing about your tutorials are the completeness of them. You bring in the full process from end to end and explain everything on the way. I didn't just learn ocean's from this one, but also learned a bit about the animation graph editor and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know. So thanks for that. One of the best channels on youtube in terms of educational quality for sure. Looking forward to more. Edit: Also, you mentioned that sorting out the foam with a trace or something in another software might be an option. Is there anything free/open source that could do that? Does DaVinci possibly have something? That could be a good follow-up tutorial. *Mike Tully's sand blowing suggestions is also a good one.

[@danfrissora5020]

Thanks so much!

[@gabrielmoro3d]

Thank you so much!

[@cgichecklist6005]

It's been a long time missed u 😊😊

[@DylanNeill3D]

Thanks! Good to be back!

[@a3bilbaneo842]

I can't believe this is not a default addon yet! Making proper infinite oceans has always been a struggle.

[@oZzWoLd2198]

I love that I actually hit bake, paused the video, went and make a coffee. I hit play and the first thing I hear is instructions on exactly what I just did. Leranding 😎😎

[@gabrielmoro3d]

Thank you!

[@shpljonk]

Did you just taught us how to make perfect ocean loop? :) Nice.

[@magicalempire]

very nice

[@kevinyehezkiel633]

for those of you who are frustrated with messy wave shapes at 33:33 minutes I have a useful tip. you need to change the mapping type mode to texture, and change the BSDF Random walk to christensen-burley, and change the sun settings like in the tutorial video. good luck

[@antonemceish1006]

this is the most clutch comment iv ever seen thanks man

[@lotrswst]

Thank you for making the updated video. I admire your passion. Can you make a video on an object (Jet ski, boat, etc..) simulation in the ocean?

[@antonshakhovnin]

And when the world needed him most, he returned

[@JUICE-wk2tz]

Thank you

[@ronylh4419]

thank you so much, always clear and right to the point. Side Joke: Its Hard to believe that Steve Vai is also into blender Hahahahah

[@anxhelo7383]

just finished watching the old ocean vid damn didnt know there was a new one

[@baggern]

The values for Nishita are realistic, rather than turning the brightness of the sky down, you should expose the scene correctly in the color management tab

[@DylanNeill3D]

Yeah I checked this and the results are exactly the same so for the purpose of keeping things simple in the tutorial I went with background adjustment instead.

[@georgerader7721]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

[@georgerader7721]

Thank you thank you thank you!!!!

[@artistimkaan]

I don't know what should i say. Im gonna just say i watched this tutorial many many many times completely... I will work on my new mega project about pirates of the carribean. When i done with this project i will ref this video. This tutorial is a masterpiece i hope one day you will start again sharing new tutorials sir!

[@ammaronorth7730]

If the displacement map is not changing (staying on frame 1), make sure that auto refresh is enabled on the image sequence node.

[@t2wave]

Good catch. I was wondering what I was missing.

[@thebanjo67]

i have it enabled but its still not playing. Any advice?

[@Walres]

@@thebanjo67 hey you figured it out?

[@bigvideoenergy]

Legit was about to go back to your old one the other day. Lmao great minds think alike!

[@moussahachemi4875]

Thank you for the very interesting tutorial. A tutorial about a ship sailing on this ocean surface with a realistic deformation and interaction would be of great help. I've tried some techniques but it's tough to find a good way to do it. Thank you again for your time and efforts.

[@Ramronv]

Good morning, have you managed to do this? I'm looking for the same thing, cheers!

[@moussahachemi4875]

Hello @@Ramronv Yes I used this tutorial to build a scene of a shipping vessel on the ocean. It's straight forward, follow the tutorial and you'll get the same result. Do you have anything specific to ask about?

[@MrMargaretScratcher]

I think a few other people asked how you'd go about making the displacements map loop - is there a way to do it other than overlapping/fading between the start ends in after effects or similar?

[@g3x978]

Hey Dylan, do you know how I could achieve some spray leaving particles on the camera lense? Thanks for the awesome tutorial.

[@honeybadger8264]

recommendation: please make a tutorial on how to make a cloudy rainy sky

[@capnpip]

Great tutorial - Had to run through it 4 times because my system kept crashing but that was my machine. Going through this tutorial multiple times tho, I think you should get a raincoat and a cigar because I'm calling you Columbo from now on. Because "oh, just one more thing.." :)

[@rosaline5159]

thank you

[@jeronimoramirez5501]

bro gracias por el video eres el mejor saludos desde paraguay

[@harutonagai8277]

Greetings! First of all, thank you for your great tutorial. My wish or idea were, a tutorial about "how to make bow waves and wake of an object" especially for a ship. It would fitting quite good to your last tutorials in context of water. Have a nice one!

[@DylanNeill3D]

Thanks for the suggestion! I've looked into this before and I'm not sure Blender is capable of doing a realistic version of this (like simulated with fluids or particles) but there might be a way to hack it somehow. I'll give it another look.

[@FrancescoSpace]

@@DylanNeill3D Oh yes, please do a tutorial on this! I've tried making a ship wake with foam and it's quite frustrating!

[@redracin]

Flip Fluids do this..

[@FrancescoSpace]

@@redracin It’s not that intuitive though.

[@yasunakaikumi]

with the current state of Blender having a crap fluid sim (sadly no GPU acceleration yet), the only success I have with is using Dynamic paint with particles for splash waves of the boat with the old method of using normal map and not this new method. we need someone in the community implement a better ocean sim somewhere down the line. although im sure you can layer a fluid sim with this to make it a complete scene

[@valentincastelo6798]

WOW THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A LITTLE WHILE. I WILL STUDY THIS AND ILL GET BACK TO YOU IN A YEAR OR SO.

[@flasham4148]

At 33:33 When switching to rendered mode, my "Ocean" ist just a flat surface. I have done 1-1 Everything the same. Did the whole thing twice but still have the same problem... Can anyone help me out?

[@corentinalbugues9313]

Go back to solid view, then make sure you're frame 1, and switch to render view again. My ocean was flat and the waves showed up when doing this

[@lobodonka]

Thanks again for the nice tutorial. One request, can we float the boat and some other objects on that same ocean.

[@nes5728]

Hi Dylan! Thank you so much for your tutorial, it was really simple to follow and the result was amazing ! As you said we can ask you to do some more tutorials so, as i'm struggling to modeling an "underwater" view, it could be incredible if you could do a tutorial about it, see you soon on KZbin !

[@DylanNeill3D]

Yeah that sounds do-able!

[@lord_lucario3429]

hi, great tutorial, but was there a compositing setup that you used?

[@johntdp]

Great job explaining each step clearly ! Any chance of doing a tutorial on a boat leaving a wake in the water?

[@Ramronv]

Good morning, have you managed to do this? I'm looking for the same thing, cheers!

[@addict85]

Very nice tutorial! If my waves ended up with too much of a pattern look when using a wide-angle lens, which parameter should I adjust?

[@miketully9905]

I'd really like to see something on doing sand blowing over a flat rocky surface where the sand makes like these snake like ropey streams. I've had a hard time finding a good example of sand doing this on KZbin, but this video has a few snake-like streams forming. Not many, most of it doesn't form these sort of horizontal vortices, but it you watch carefully you can catch a few that form for a second or two. I've been trying for a while now to do this with particle systems, but it looks just awful. Here's the link to that video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qZ_bfWOaisqMm7c If anyone can find a better example PLEASE post a link.

[@MarCuseus]

Snow does this as well: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iX7Jc2SIeqZ_ppY

[@GiacomoCarmassi]

Amazing Dylan as always . Can u provide make a tutorial to obtain a realistic simulation on boat /yacht in huge ocean?? PLEEEESEEEEEEEEE

[@cffilmmaker]

Protip! You can use an expression to automate the wave animation instead of keyframing it- that way it will always scale to your animation. Under the "Time" slider for the wave, type #frame/(your framerate). My framerate was 24fps so I used #frame/24. Awesome tutorial, love your work! Edit: Discovered that foam will not bake more than one frame with this method. They really need to workshop the foam for the ocean modifier :/

[@DylanNeill3D]

Does that work tho? I tested this when I made this tute and when you bake the ocean the animation doesn't work. Hoping they've finally fixed this!

[@cffilmmaker]

@@DylanNeill3D It worked up until I tried adding foam, the only way I could get it to bake out more than one frame of it was doing your keyframe method. I'll have to edit my comment to reflect that.

[@liambuffat3731]

Great tutorial. Do you know how to add breaking waves near an obstruction such as an island or a ship? I assume dynamic paint would work but so far I have no luck with it.

[@SHAVIM]

you'll need water sims for that I think, or a seperate breaking waves vector displacement map which you mix using texture painting and keyframe the texture painting

[@zeyadhani2091]

Hey great tutorial so far but I am having an issue where after rendering for the first time on in rendering scene (After working on the ocean material) All I get is a reflective material with no ocean texture or waves what so ever, might you help me with that?

[@webbeveep2243]

Is there a way to tile this geometry wise? Thank you for making this tutorial. :)