Save the Ocean Sim!

We’ve been on a bit of a break due to holidays, and work schedules, but I wanted to let you know about the latest build of the Ocean Simulation Tools version of Blender that has been posted. Contrary to some people’s belief, the project has not died, and work is progressing very well! : )

The newest build is the January 4th version which is now available for donors for Win 32/64, Linux 32/64, and OSX 64 as usual.

Here’s what is new to this build:

Updates in Build 0104

• Ability to Sync Ocean Modifier with Ocean Texture
After hedging our bets on what the final ocean tool would be, it looks like a combination of the modifier and texture will give the most flexible results. We can now use the Ocean Modifier to generate the mesh with displacement directly, as well as using an Ocean Texture with a reference to the mesh that is using the Ocean Modifier in order to have greater control over the ocean mesh materials. The important thing now is that when synced, both tools use the same ocean sim data so they should work together seamlessly.

• Ocean Modifier Mesh Displacement Choice
The ability for the modifier to choose between either generating the ocean surface grid directly and displacing that or just displacing existing geometry. (This is pretty much the same thing as using a texture in conjunction with the displace modifier, but simpler, and is a nicer way to feed in any arbitrary mesh to deform.)

• Hooked up Normal information from Ocean Sim code to the modifier.
Matt writes – “The way it’s working in Blender now is that the greater the value of the ‘Normal’ slider, the more of this fine detail normal is used for shading rather than the slope of the actual 3d geometry, so the slider is acting like a blend between lighting based on the overall 3d shape vs the fine bump map. Of course the other reason for having this normal information is that for far away shots you can just use the normal map and avoid having to displace any geometry (eg. http://www.pasteall.org/pic/7797 ).”

• Repeating Mesh Tiling
Due to the Ocean Modifier not working properly with the Array modifier, we’ve now built in a tiling option to the Ocean Modifier to allow for large ocean meshes. This feature is available when using the default ‘Generate’ geometry option in the Ocean Modifier.

• Initial Documentation Posted to the Blender Wiki
Still not complete, but some initial documentation is now available here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Broken/OceanSimulation

• Blender 2.56 builds
As a nice bonus, the last round of builds have now been built on the 2.56 release, so that’s a nice update as well. We’ll get the 2.56a version in the next round probably, but I don’t think the bugs should affect us for now.

Next Steps

At this point, we’d really like to see donors get their hands dirty testing out this latest build, and really start to try playing with the settings and materials to see how good of a result we can get. Please send any links to test videos you may come up with so we can see how you are doing.

Also, we would like feedback about issues that would hinder real world production usage. The current build is pretty much feature complete for the current phases (1 & 2) of project funding, so now we just want to make sure everything is working as expected.

After everyone has had a chance to have a look through it, we’re planning on opening the builds folder to the public in order to start getting a wider testing audience for the project (perhaps in a week or so).

Budget

The donation widget was closed on December 31 due to an oversite by me in not extending the donation time period. Unfortunately Chipin.com does not allow re-opening of fund-raising campaigns once they have closed. I think now this is probably fine, as we have enough budget to finish what we are currently working on.

I don’t have exact numbers just yet, but I believe we are getting close to using up the end of the final donation amount of $2580.50USD (yes, someone donated 50 cents…), including our Paypal fees which are probably getting up towards the $180 range (ugh!). In addition, Matt has stated that he will be fixing any bugs that are in the code at no cost, so that won’t affect the budget. Also, he has also offered to do a little more work on the foam accumulation feature on his own time and at no additional cost (thanks Matt!), so I’m also very excited about that!

Thanks again to all those who contributed in a concrete way to this project. It’s amazing to see what can be accomplished when people work together, and actually open their wallets (if every so slightly!  haha )  : )

Todd