Animated sea...

[Frankiesmileshow]

I am trying to animate ocean waves viewed from about 30 degrees, for the same shooter game the ships thread is for, but I cant find good reference pictures of animated waves. Id like help on that!

The waves are supposed to scroll horizontally, towards the left, and tile horizontally. I will place multiple layers of waves so I can place separate background elements between two of them.

I tried building waves by making wavy lines that scroll from right to left like this, and then give them shape:

but the result doesn't work at all! first the perspective looks too high, and especially, it looks like the scrolling is vertical instead of horizontal. Also it looks plain wrong for some other reason I cant put my finger on.

Now im trying something else, to base the waves on circles that scroll from right to left, and that grow and shrink.

If anyone can find a good reference for waves (or knows a good technique to animate them), or can otherwise help, it would be very appreciated!

(I think I might be biting more than I can chew here...)

[Brian]

well you did really well! I am very pleased with your image! Are you at all into making tiles? Because I have some ocean tiles for a video game that need animated!

[Frankiesmileshow]

Thats where my circles based one is at now. I think its much better as far as perspective goes, but it looks less like water than the previous version...

[Ryan Cordel]

Yeah, it looks a bit like tentacles rising out and whacking something. Maybe try to follow the build of your previous 'vertihoriz' () waves attempt, since this attempt looks a bit empty and how the waves rise.

[Xion]

I liked the first one much better. All it needed was some smoothin' out.
This new one, as you said, does not look like water. The speed and form of the waves seems rather random, rather than building on the previous frame.

[Stefano]

I've found a fairly good 3D simulation showing how waves should propagate to look natural:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000000/a000068/index.html

Notice that there seems to be more than one direction of waves merging together to form the right moving ocean.

[Gas 13]

You've made a really good job, actually. Here I uploaded water tiles I found in my archives.

[Frankiesmileshow]

Heres a newer version: (putting two to see tiling)

the tiling is not perfect yet, but its getting there.

[Zero]

Better, but I much prefer the wider waves of your first attempt. The colors were also better there, imo.

[Dusty]

While the first one looked better, the newest one really does give a great sense of depth. The only problem I have with this is that waves don't really act like that out in the sea. They water is a lot more uniform and works more like a cloth flapping in the air because waves don't tend to crest until they near shore.

[Alonso]

The latest version of the animated sea-waves is coincidentally or consciously similar to Metal Slug's:

[AdamAtomic]

Alonso, at least on my system that image isn't popping up unless i dig out the URL from your post, and having done so, the water is definitely not sufficiently similar to warrant a post that is otherwise lacking critique or advice.

Frankie - if you can be bothered to find the image that Alonso tried to link, you'l see one thing they did that your image is moving TOWARD but has not yet achieved - which is water is one constantly distorting surface, rather than a flat surface with a variety of distortions popping out of it here and there.  I'd continue working on eradicating those flat sections while you polish the tiling!

[mjau]

Here's a short video of some real sea waves I shot a couple days ago (at Fedje, Norway): click (1.5 mb).  Not the best quality (i've just got a digital photo camera, not really intended for video..), but I hope it might be somewhat useful anyway.

[Alonso]

Alonso, at least on my system that image isn't popping up unless i dig out the URL from your post, and having done so, the water is definitely not sufficiently similar to warrant a post that is otherwise lacking critique or advice.

Frankie - if you can be bothered to find the image that Alonso tried to link, you'l see one thing they did that your image is moving TOWARD but has not yet achieved - which is water is one constantly distorting surface, rather than a flat surface with a variety of distortions popping out of it here and there.  I'd continue working on eradicating those flat sections while you polish the tiling!

I wasn't trying to push too hard, but if it looked otherwise than what was mentioned, I wouldn't have said a word. Apparently, I'm the only one who notes rescemblance, after asking a couple of friends, so be that my interpretation. Regardless, I'd try to add frames to the entire animation (particularly because there's a couple of waves that leap just too much). Animating sea is worthy of being an ordeal, I've known, so I hope you reach a result you like. I'd also change the colour-tone of the waves to something more, well, saturated (albeit the suggestion be with mslug's sea in mind).

Should I embellish further, AdamAtomic?

[Elrinth]

this is some bad ass animation! Well done! What's going to be it's usage?