Creating an ocean - Part 3 of 4: Adding a boat wake

Files used: areadownloads....
In this video, we show you how to add a boat that generates a basic wake in the water.
Additional reading: help.autodesk....

[@박소진-f4r]

Guys, we've fixed the error of creating huge waves when you raise the resolution. I think I changed the resolution to another power of 2 number, like 512x512 or 1024x1024 and that solved it.

[@IvaReal]

YOu are a herooooo

[@tommasostraga7356]

Thank you a lot

[@jackrippers8526]

This needs to be pinned @Autodesk_Maya

[@visualmatics2619]

Hii, I am having trouble after adding wavesolver and geo properties. When i play to simulate with bossoutput and boat on it. Bossoutput starts to fall apart and are doing some crazy things. I followed your every step even tried to change some things like lower up the resolution, reducing the amplitude. It kinda works but not giving a proper result still a bad one. I Have seen many comments here just as the same situation as mine. Is it a bug ? Please can you help us by clearing this out...

[@captainzoltan7737]

when i add the projection of the wake (not foam just normal) theres a visible ridge where the projection tile ends. that obviously looks unnatural

[@tylerkapus6731]

When adding the boat to boss wave solver influences, the "wake" stays stationary even though my collider is moving. Any tips?

[@DR-wk8ub]

I can change the height of the ripple/wake but not its width. Even if I use horizontal displacement. Is there a way to do that?

[@serhanbozdemir3829]

Hi, is there a possibility to make this witht Max? I'm not talking about phoenix fd and bifrost for ''Maya''. The idea is the same with C4d Infinite ocean actually which is an animated foam texture adopted to the boat wake .. I believe that after Houdini, Max is the best with the water simulations but there must be a way to get rid of plugins and particle calculation times which will be a life saving solution for developing and introducing new designs..

[@怠惰貓]

If anyone has the problem that the waves doesn't show with the moving object, one of the reason I found is that the collider is too small. My boat didn't have the effect in the first size, so I made all the scales twice then the waves started working. I guess Bifrost just needs bigger model to calculate the movement. The first time I met this problem was on making water in bottle, then the water kept disappearing when I press play. The final solution was the same above but it stock me for days.

[@BMCVFX3D]

scale in bifrost is very important

[@mansay2057]

thanks that helped

[@cheezeburger_factory]

Thank you for your advice! but It still does not work on my scene.. do you know any other solution for a real scale?

[@KaMeKaZiKaI]

I'm having a similar issue to others, the wake doesn't show up after applying the wave solver and adding the geo influence. Looked through the comments and haven't found a solution that works yet. Thanks for the tutorial, super cool!

[@KaMeKaZiKaI]

Ok, actually it's showing up but its starting super far from the ship for some reason. Changing the collider and generator doesn't seem to be doing anything though

[@captainzoltan7737]

when I add wave solvers to my boat (a generic catamaran hull) it turns out really bad m looks like a bunch of vertical indented lines that looks super unrealistic. however when i made a playblast (just so i could see smooth animation since the cache is chuggy) it looked way better. (albeit weaker) when i go on arnold render view though it looks just as bad as it does in the viewport. it also quietens it down when I cache it.

[@misteridiot123]

i had to scale my texture 5 to 60 instead of 30 because the foam was around the edges of my model, like a white border. the 60 seemed to have fixed it.

[@brittiebrittie123]

When I play the timeline, the wake appears incredibly intense and there are even ripples around the edge of the BossOutput plane. I reduce the Amplitude down to .2 where it looks good in playback, but when I hit Cache All, the wake is barely visible (and luckily the ripples at the edges of the plane are gone). Why is there a disconnect between the playback and what is actually being cached?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

There really shouldn't be. Are you using the included scene files, or your own? Scale could be a factor here.

[@brittiebrittie123]

@@Autodesk_Maya I followed along with the tutorial and created my own scene file, matching all the settings in the tutorial.

[@ronhiggins7682]

Hi There! Great Tutorial series! I have a question. Once I add the BossWaveSolver and the Boat as a BossGeoProperties the wave solver creates huge waves around the boat instead of a nice wake like in the video. I tried deleting both the Wave solver and Wave influence (boat) and re creating them and I get the same result.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

What's the scale of your simulation? Are you using the provided files, or your own files?

[@mulalalu]

@@Autodesk_Maya Same problem here, I try with a simple 60x60 plane, I use a relatively simple cylinder as a "boat", but the mesh just explodes.

[@ChettarKK]

Hello again, I'm really stumped at the moment, as soon as I add the boat as a wave solver and move a frame, the water turns jagged with a cross through the plane, the wake is there but the water is going crazy. I'll try to get a screen grab for you. It feels like a glitch but it continues happening and I've restarted these tuts several times trying to figure out where I went wrong.

[@ChettarKK]

Sorry, I add the boat as a wave influence is what I meant to say.

[@ChettarKK]

Correction, there is no wake, when I turn the wave solver off, everything returns to normal.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@ChettarKK Is it possible your wave solver settings are too high? What if you turn off the spectral waves first - is the wave solver still crazy, or does it look correct?

[@ChettarKK]

@@Autodesk_Maya I really don't think so, this is a strange situation I've been having every time I get to this exact spot. It happens immediately after I apply BossGeoproperties1 to my boat, If I hit play, it plays through normal with no wake result, if I hit forward one frame the entire water plane disappears, and if I click in the timeline forwards or backwards, the water begins to protrude out like stucco. All of my settings on the wave solver are exactly like yours. The stucco stays even though the plane flattens out when I hide the spectral waves.

[@ChettarKK]

I'm starting to get results by keeping the resolution the same and shrinking the wave height and amplitude, could it possibly have something to do with the scaling, just like the boat?

[@basspig]

Is it possible to make this ocean simulation interact with objects, such as posts sticking out of the water? It would seem logical since the boat object interacts with this water. But when I try to make a post interact with it by selecting the BOSS node and the post, and choosing Make Collide under fluid menu, the error message is telling me I must select a fluid. Is BOSS not a fluid?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Check out Appendix B of this same tutorial: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gIKnkJyGirygeJY

[@Cyberdeathcore]

added BossWaveSolver and BossGeoProperties, wakes appear in front of my boat it was suppose to be behind the boat, i have no freaking idea how to fix this, pls i need help asap

[@JENILPATEL]

There is no new effect happening due to the Collison of boat I tried the same way you did for many times but no result... Please Help ...! Help..!

[@Autodesk_Maya]

So if you really crank up the Wave Height, nothing appears? Have you checked that your caches are disabled (red)? What if you disable the spectral waves? Will they appear on a flat plane?

[@olegostapiv2389]

how is your playback so smooth after cashing the spectral waves. mine is still chugging really slow.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Are you sure all your cache buttons are green? What are your system specs? Bifrost is very RAM hungry, so the more RAM you have the better.

[@PeterMakal]

Isn't scaling everthing down for Bifrost to match this "1 unit is 1 meter" affects how Arnold redner stuff? I mean Arnold still assumes that 1 unit is 1 cm (or whatever is set up in preferences). Do I have to change Render Unit to "Meter" instead of "Use Maya Unit" (in Render Settings window > System tab > Render Settings section) to have shaders and lights behave appropriately?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

As long as objects have a consistent relative size, the units shouldn't matter very much. You may just need to adjust intensity or other light parameters to compensate, but you won't get incorrect reflections/refractions or anything like that.

[@wade1284]

When I boost the wave solver resolution up to anything above 300, maya crashes. I have a pretty solid z840 computer, so I'm not sure what the issue is. 8 core Xeon E5 2637 and 128 gigs of ram...could it be a GPU issue? I've got a quadro k5000

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Hmm the GPU shouldn't be an issue since Bifrost Liquid runs on the CPU. Is your scene just the one above, or are you trying this in your own scene with additional elements? Also have you updated to the latest version of whatever Maya you're using?

[@atlantisr4560]

Hi, hello, I don’t know if you have time. I want to ask you a question. I am studying your tutorial now. I use the same version of Maya, but one thing that makes me very depressed is how do I cache and When loading the cache, he just can't use the cache, and it must be loaded frame by frame during playback. What is going on?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Without getting too far into it, the Bifrost cache isn't really a "final" cache - it's more of an intermediate step that helps while you're still working on the effect. When you're actually done, you can select the ocean mesh and go to Cache > Alembic Cache to cache out final animated geometry.

[@atlantisr4560]

@@Autodesk_Maya I know, but although there are cache files in the cache folder, no matter how I load the cache files, it is useless. I feel that the player did not find the cached files, but I checked the load. He still I need to start rendering every frame from the beginning, which makes me unable to adjust the ripple effect produced by the boat

[@MrHaxorer]

At 9:33 I don't understand how the main spectral wave foam nodes are now standard non-projection nodes when they were replaced by projections in the previous video at 7:57?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

The foam at 9:33 here is the wake foam. At 9:44, we add it to the projection foam you're talking about (which is the holdover from the previous video).

[@noshka4581]

Hello, first of all thank you for this great tutorial ! I only have a slight issue, even if i increase the depth of my bump, the waves from the wave solver don't appear... would you have a solution by any chance, @Maya Learning Channel ?

[@xzhou4252]

hey man,can you fixed it?

[@noshka4581]

@@xzhou4252 it's been a while, but i think i had to delete the animation cache, and cache it again

[@MegaDanface]

I'm having trouble getting any collision from any object. I have a plane with the spectral waves added and have a cube moving from one end of the plane to the other. even though I have the cube selected and I've added it to influence the plane, I'm not getting any collision. Am I missing anything here?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Hmm. Are you sure your wave solver cache is disabled? Have you tried really cranking up the wave height for it?

[@TheFreeCreative]

hey you can try this cinema4d and realflow infinit ocean kzbin.info/www/bejne/jquvfGeCobmfq5Y please subscribe me

[@spoiledengine]

Hey mega its a long shot but was your gizmo set right? i wasn't getting anything either till i did center pivot,freeze transform and delete history for the original plane, the result i got was weak so had to crank things up. (gizmo was slightly lower and rotated) plus for the object doing the colliding

[@Qrown1145]

How do I get BitFrost Fluid on the workspace bar? And I dont have Boss?!! Im using Autodesk Maya 2018

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Check in the Plug-in Manager. Are they both enabled?

[@rangeeternity]

Hi! I 've followed all the steps but have one problem : there is no interaction between my boat and the boss ocean, could you help me please? Thank you ! ;)

[@Autodesk_Maya]

As in the wake doesn't appear? If you double check the cache files, does the shape of the boat appear in the 2D image files? Also, try turning all your caches off and then play (it'll be slower, but the boat should appear if you have the right solver setup).

[@JustAnotherGhost7]

@@Autodesk_Maya i have the same problem, im check my 2d files but is only a green lines

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@JustAnotherGhost7 Are you using the included scene file, or your own file?

[@atlantisr4560]

Is this Maya's official account?

[@DDAschool]

hey buddy, I've increased the wave height from 1 to 1.5, 4 and I'm not getting the same level of wake displacement across the polygon plane. I thing I've followed all of the steps. I know this was an issue for someone else. I've read through the comments but there was no resolve, thanks.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Hmm, and your plane has the same resolution and is built at the same scale? If you check your Preferences in the Settings section, are the working units set to "centimeter"?

[@DDAschool]

@@Autodesk_Maya yes it's set to cm.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@DDAschool Odd. Have you tried deleting your preferences and doing the tutorial again with default preferences?

[@DDAschool]

@@Autodesk_Maya no I haven't but the crazy part is that everything works well except this part. I'd hate to have to try it again but I'll try.

[@jerzyniedzioka4490]

Hi. Super tutorial. Because first time I can make real ocean. 1 i 2 part is ok but 3 part make my computer completely slowly. What is wrong with my hardware? I have 2 x Xeon X5650, 48GB RAM and Quadro K4200, Win 10. Maby my computer is weak?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

BOSS is primarily a CPU-based feature, so anything to speed up your CPU power or RAM will generally boost performance.

[@jerzyniedzioka4490]

At first I thank you for answering. Ok I read about Boss and I know it use only CPU. But in viewport it use only 30% my core. Finally how can I force Maya to use more RAM? Could you help me/ I'm only 66years student. Will be good to show your computer configuration before start the tutorials. It's my suggestion. Best regards.@@Autodesk_Maya

[@davidbro5071]

May i know the minimum pc requirement for making boat wake with foam in a big ocean

[@Autodesk_Maya]

You can find the recommended specs here: knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Maya-2020.html In general, the more RAM and CPU speed, the better.

[@theactualalfie9045]

Hello. I've followed the tutorial all the way up to 2:37 but as soon as I add the Wave Solver and the Wave Influence, it seems to go all wrong. When I start to playback my animation, all of my spectral waves disappear and all I get is my boat floating along on nothing! I've re-tried the tutorial multiple times to see if I've missed something but I haven't and on some occasions, my spectral waves start to go crazy and start to form into jagged lines! When I look back in my BOSS editor after the animation, the Wave Solver is now above both of the Spectral Waves when I put it below just like in the tutorial. Could this be the issue? Thank You.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Hmm, that definitely doesn't sound right. Can you try turning all the caches off, then play the scene again? It will play slower, but at least it'll allow you to rule out a caching problem. Also, make sure to set the Playback Speed to Realtime Free (right-click the Time Slider).

[@theactualalfie9045]

@@Autodesk_Maya Thanks for the reply. I have just tried this and it has come out with same result. Also, when I put my time slider into the Real Time, it causes the time slider to skip frames.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@theactualalfie9045 Sorry I misspoke, I meant "Every Frame, Free". I need more coffee lol. Another question, you're sure you're running the wave solver simulation on the same input mesh as the spectral waves right? And that you're displaying the output mesh of that simulation? As opposed to the flat, tiled plane for rendering in lesson 2?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@theactualalfie9045 Oh and to answer your earlier question, no it shouldn't matter that the Wave Solver is above the Spectral Solvers.

[@theactualalfie9045]

@@Autodesk_Maya I've just tried that and I'm still receiving the same result. I have the poly plane (pPLane2) hidden like the tutorial says and I have the BossOutput turned on which the simulation is on?

[@mohitgurung3404]

Sir, can we do the splash effect using bifrost?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Check out Appendix C of this same tutorial series: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5OWdmWDocSma8k

[@timamj1916]

After 2 lessons projects started lagging. Though my PC is powerfull it's still not enough. I have good GPU but arnold doesn't use it. If there is any good render program I can use without buying it? I'm still student and using maya for students. Also another question is about how can i make maya work faster? Cuz hiding second plane doesn't affect much speed of maya. Everything lagging. Every movement. Settings 1 unit = 1 cm.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

What are the specs of your PC? In general, simulation is a slow process, especially when generating the initial cache. You may want to try lowering the subdivisions of your plane to improve performance.

[@timamj1916]

@@Autodesk_Maya intel core i5-7600K CPU @ 3.80 GHz. 16gb RAM DDR3, Nvidia GeForce 970 3gb and SSD 256

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@timamj1916 Hmm, on an i5 you'll probably need to step down the quality of the simulation. BOSS mainly uses CPU. Also is it still that slow once you've cached the simulation?

[@timamj1916]

@@Autodesk_Maya i've changed resolution of planes to 512 and disabled all cash. Also second plane made as reference. But stil lagging(

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@timamj1916 Wait, you disabled the cache? You definitely want to be using that.

[@prasannamanna8222]

My waves are going through the boat How to apply collision?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Check out part 4 for the answer to that.

[@nanorobledo8786]

sorry, im on minute 2:21 in steps order, but when i hit play the animation is way too slow, unlike yours, do you know why?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

What kind of CPU are you running? In general, effects can be quite CPU and RAM intensive. In the end though, the interactive performance won't matter since the render sequence (which we show at the end) will always run at full speed.

[@nanorobledo8786]

Maya Learning Channel I'm on a i7 8700, with 16 ram, the thing is, when I'm seeing the effects of the boat on the water , it runs too slow to see them properly. In quite new to Maya so I don't know if I have to config anything to use both gpu and CPU or something like that...

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Bifrost is mainly a CPU based tool. 16 gigs of RAM is probably a bottleneck as well (I have 64 on my demo machine). You can try temporarily reducing the number of subdivisions on your ocean plane and then re-caching just for interactive lookdev purposes. Then, once you're ready to render your final, you can turn all the settings up again.

[@nanorobledo8786]

Maya Learning Channel OMG , I didn't know, well thank you for the answer, I'm gonna do that

[@Magma-uw7yo]

hello is it possible to make the boat float ?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

You typically won't simulate a boat floating dynamically. Instead, you'd hand animate the boat floating and simulate the water's reaction to it.

[@d.a.visual]

How about if i want to make an airplane crash into the water?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Check out this lesson on splashes: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5OWdmWDocSma8k&lc=z231yhsjiuj3fnghb04t1aokgvi4pq5k3npovwbsjytlbk0h00410

[@hdjin4392]

Why don't I have an HTM_BOSS_Ocean_part1_end.ma folder

[@hdjin4392]

part2

[@jerrytheobnoxiousmouse.ser6161]

When I add the boat as a wave solver, the ocean becomes invisible. Help?

[@timwong2704]

The boat should be added as a Wave Influence object and not a Wave Solver

[@jerrytheobnoxiousmouse.ser6161]

@@timwong2704 Sorry, I meant Wave Influence. But I found that when I put the Wave Solver's resolution to 600 like in the video, the ocean disappears, but it doesn't crash. When I put it anywhere between 256 and 600, Maya crashes.

[@timwong2704]

@@jerrytheobnoxiousmouse.ser6161 What version of Maya/Bifrost are you using? That is a known defect that should have been fixed in more recent builds.

[@jerrytheobnoxiousmouse.ser6161]

@@timwong2704 Maya 2019, in the plug-in editor, bifrostvisplugin.mll has a plugin version of 3.0

[@jerrytheobnoxiousmouse.ser6161]

​@@timwong2704 I have managed to get through this problem by lowering the resolution of the wave solver, since it apparently was too big for my PC. I now have a problem where after adding the foam and everything to the flat plane at the end of the video, there's a square of normal water at the center of the ocean and the rest is white-colored like milk.

[@mulalalu]

Uhm, whenever I add a wav solver, the mesh just explodes, anyone have any idea why?

[@HansenEdits]

Don't change the resolution (like seen at 2:52) and it should work.

[@mulalalu]

@@HansenEdits It worked perfectly, you're a lifesaver

[@tinaluc0501]

@@HansenEdits Stop tricking ppl

[@mohitgurung3404]

the boss plane has a weird deformation once the boat travels in the middle why?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Can you clarify what you mean by "weird deformation"?

[@mohitgurung3404]

Sir, 8:45 after the wave projection I can’t see the ocean effect while rendering the plane 2!

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@mohitgurung3404 You don't see the original ocean waves, or the new wake waves?

[@mohitgurung3404]

Maya Learning Channel the new one! The render you have done at 8:45 you can see the waves but in my case there is mo any waves just a flat plane with tha eave solver! If only i could send you the picture! 😔

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@mohitgurung3404 Are you sure you sized the projection properly and that it's pointed down and not up? Also, when you render, try using the "Update Full Scene" command rather than the refresh button. Sometimes it can make a difference.

[@ao1089]

When I turn off wrap for my wake foam, all my other tiles go white :(

[@Autodesk_Maya]

That would make sense, since the foam would be stretched instead of wrapping around the UVs.

[@ao1089]

@@Autodesk_Maya But how come that's not happening in the video?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@ao1089 Ah sorry I misspoke. Actually, you do want the texture just once (since you don't want the wake to repeat), but if everything else is going white I'd double-check to make sure a.) you plugged it into the right spot. You didn't plug it into opacity or emission by accident did you? Or b.) double-check the wake files themselves in a 2D image editor. Do they look correct? Or are they all white as well?

[@ao1089]

@@Autodesk_Maya I just got to say; thank you so much for these in-depth tutorials and for replying to my problem. Much appreciated! I've plugged its "alpha out" into the shader's "emission", just like in the video. The cached foam texture looks correct; its alpha is all black except for where the foam is, where it's white. And yet somewhow it still makes all the other tiles white when I turn off wrap. I'm having all sorts of problems with the wake, I'll just give up. For some reason my wake texture does not align with my boat, like yours does right off the bat after rotating it -90 in X. I'll have to move the projection around in X and Y to manually try to make it sit where it's supposed to be. I don't get why there's no patch size settings in the wake's BossWaveSolver. I guess that's why we'll have to guess what size to scale up the projection to. Feels so arbitrary. A scale of 105 looks somewhat correct in my case. With the other textures at least we knew to scale it to half of the patch size. And when I combine the primary waves' foam texture with the wake's foam texture using a colormath node, the foam becomes much darker. I tried increasing the alpha gain for both the textures, but it has absolutely no effect. Not even a value of 0 made any difference. Might that have something to do with Arnold's .TX conversion stuff? This is way over my head... I'll just move on and try the particle foam stuff in lesson 4. Thanks anyway!

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@ao1089 Hmm, if you can host the file somewhere I can take a look at it. Seems like it might be a compound problem (i.e. multiple things gone wrong stacked on top of each other) which will make it hard to debug without seeing it.

[@riouskan7699]

Hello, even I already cache it, the anime still can`t play smooth. Is there any solution for it?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Depending on the size/resolution of the ocean, it can still be very heavy. If you want to see it at full speed, i'd recommend playblasting the scene via Windows > Playblast.

[@arvin3567]

Its not producing a wake after adding the object.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Did you make sure to turn your caches off?

[@arvin3567]

Turned off caches and recached still didnt work

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@arvin3567 Have you tried upping the wave size considerably on the wave solver? Go really extreme just to see if there's any effect at all.

[@arvin3567]

@@Autodesk_Maya Hi it worked now thanks! But after putting cache files as a bump map, its not showing up even though I increased the value of the bump map high.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@arvin3567 If you look at the texture files in an image viewer, do you clearly see the wake? You can also try increasing the exposure on your bump map's file node.

[@prisondude]

Anyone else have problems after lesson two where this guy doesn't make any sense as to all the connections in hypershade just say file not what I'm actually looking for

[@TheFreeCreative]

hey you can try this cinema4d and realflow kzbin.info/www/bejne/jquvfGeCobmfq5Y please subscribe me

[@DDAschool]

hey I understand and would love to walk you through it if you don't know how to do it.

[@hdjin4392]

Why don't I have an HTM_BOSS_Ocean_part2_end.ma folder

[@Autodesk_Maya]

I just checked the download file and it does have it. Maybe try re-downloading it. If the files appear empty, remember that you need to regenerate the wave caches for the initial simulation (I didn't include them because they would've made the file size enormous)

[@hdjin4392]

@@Autodesk_Maya I know what I did wrong. Thank you very much