The Ocean

The ocean is a major component of RenderWorld, and not surprisingly, one of the most complex objects, especially when you start adding in special water effects like ripples, swell, and glitter. In its simplest incarnation, the ocean requires you to provide grid sizes and spacings, a random number seed, wind speed and direction, as well as a handful of other numbers. As the complexity increases, even more parameters must be entered and additional files must be provided. In return for this effort on your part, RenderWorld provides a great deal of flexibility and automation. The camera can be placed anywhere in a scene, from outer space to deep underwater. Water waves not only look realistic in a single frame, but automatically roll through the scene with proper speed in succeeding frames. Water coloration and visibility change automatically in response to turbidity or changing sun position. Clouds reflect off of the water surface. All of this happens without any effort from the user. Doing 1000 frames requires no more user effort than doing 1 (the computational requirements on the other hand may be a different matter).

Contents:

Basic Ocean File

Reducing Rendering Time

Enhanced Glitter

Controlling Reflection Qualities

Ocean Disturbances

Reflecting Walls

Height and Multiplier Fields

Reflection and Transmission of Objects Through the Ocean Surface

Excluding Elements