For Waterline PRO update 6 - the goal was to push our real-time oceans to be on par with the ocean tools of software like Blender or Houdini while still running in real-time on the GPU.
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For this we needed to first integrate every and all Ocean Spectra we could find - initially this meant that we needed the JONSWAP and Pierson-Moskowitz spectra, however more obscure model variations emerged as development went on. To the rescue was our Custom Spectra model which allows you to manually edit a curve asset to generate a spectrum dataset just the way you need it to with unprecedented level of control over every wavelet generated by the simulation.
What's more we also made some novel changes to the FFT Simulation which allows you to inject directional motion in ALL FFT models even if they do not natively support it!
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Even with all of this the work was only half way done as all models would ultimately struggle when it came to generating large swells while still having detailed wavelets. So we modified the Ocean Actor to be able to run multiple (up to 4) Ocean Simulations.
This presented another issue however - running 4 FFT Simulations proved to be a tough task for any GPU, so the next step was to introduce alternative ocean simulation methods that did not rely on FFT calculations, for this we also added:
Gerstner Ocean simulation option - this was great for larger swells.
Baked Ocean simulation - this made small FFT ocean wavelets basically free.
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As an added bonus ALL of these systems are integrated with the current CPU Buoyancy, Foam and Real-Time Ocean Caustics simulations.
So regardless of the ocean you create you can take advantage of all of these features.
What's more all of these features are integrated in a single ocean actor and can be swapped, layered and enabled as needed with the press of a few buttons!
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Waterline PRO 6 is available here:
https://www.fab.com/listings/0c1fc983-db84-4df3-b623-03db76d552c6
For more info check out these links:
https://www.youtube.com/@dumpsterfireproductions/videos
https://x.com/DF__Productions
Phillips Spectrum - the golden standard for ocean simulation for film and cinema. This was the original ocean sim method that we introduced a few years back.
Pierson–Moskowitz Spectrum - It assumes that if the wind blows steadily for a long time over a large area, then the waves will eventually reach a point of equilibrium with the wind. This is known as a fully developed sea - it lacks wind directionality.
JONSWAP Spectrum - an extention of the Pierson-Moskowitz Spectrum, with extra peak enhancement factor.
Gerstner Waves - for older hardware that struggles to run FFT calculations on the GPU.
An even more lightweight ocean that uses pre-baked FFT ocean simulation from a flip-book texture (more on this in Part 2)
Custom FFT Spectrum - all ocean spectra use physical parameters to construct a data set (like a curve) that drives the ocean appearance. Here we can edit this curve DIRECTLY to create ANY ocean we want!
Finally you can Layer up to 4 of these methods on top of each other. For example here we have a high res pre-baked texture of an FFT ocean combined with a larger swells driven by a Gerstner function resulting in great performance and visuals!
Full Feature Video