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Learn how to simulate a wave crashing onto a lighthouse. This workflow will involve the use of FLIP fluids to create the wave, colliding surfaces, and an ocean spectrum. Once that is complete, learn how to surface the water, add white water and generate spray effects. Finally, render out the sequence using Mantra and composite the AOVs to complete the shot.

Note: Lighthouse model by Pieter Talens. A version of this shot was originally created by Stephen Tucker when Fluids were first introduced into Houdini.

Note: Fluid simulations consume a lot of disk space and you should set aside at least 1TB to fully complete a project like this. If you don’t have that available then you will have to work with a low res simulation. RAM also plays a big part in simulations and at least 32 GB is recommended but more will be needed for a detailed sim.

<img src="https://media.sidefx.com/uploads/tutorial/h18_5/spevick/aws-thinkbox-logo-300x125.png">

This project was completed by using AWS Thinkbox cloud services to get access to bigger computers with more RAM for simulating and rendering.

DOWNLOAD PROJECT FILES
1 | Introduction to HDAs
Explore the crashing wave shot along with a quick tour of the lessons that you will be completing to achieve the same result. This will give you a good idea of where these lessons are taking you to help you orient yourself as you work through all the steps.
2 | Anatomy of a FLIP Simulation
Before you start setting up the crashing wave, learn about the parts that make up a typical FLIP simulation. This gives you a chance to get comfortable with some of the key tools and terminology used to complete these lessons.
3 | Set up the Wave Sim
Learn how to set up the Flat tank to hold your FLIP fluid. Align it with the lighthouse scene and make it big enough to accommodate your final shot. Next learn how to add and shape a hero wave which will be set up to crash against the lighthouse.
4 | Set up the Collider
Learn how to set up the collider of the lighthouse to interact with your wave simulation. Set it up as a static object using the shelf tool then optimize the voxel size settings then cache out the results for use during the simulation of the fluids.
5 | Add an Ocean Spectrum
Learn how to take your existing simulation of the wave crashing into the lighthouse and add more detail using an ocean spectrum. This will add smaller waves to the FLIP tank to create a more active body of water. Learn how to control the waves to fade off as they approach the beach.
6 | Surfacing Techniques
Learn how to surface the simulated cache. This process can get slow therefore you will look at ways of speeding up the workflow. Learn how to control the small details and subtract out the collision geometry where there is overlap.
7 | Source the Whitewater
Learn how to use the shelf tools to create white water from existing fluid caches. Learn how to visualize the particles to help you manage the curvature, acceleration and vorticity. Understanding how all of these affect the final whitewater is an important step.
8 | Simulate the Whitewater
Learn how to generate the white water simulation from the sources set up in the last lesson. Learn how to make interesting shapes in the spray and bubbles. Learn how to create the right amount of detail to bring your simulation to life.
9 | Add Whitewater Spray FX
Learn how to create a copy of your white water and spend time focusing on the spray effects. Learn how to use Attribute Wrangle nodes to refine the results. The attributes you set up here will be available when you composite the final AOVs.
10 | Render with Mantra
Learn how to render the final effect to Mantra. Learn how to use Render output nodes to create render passes for the lighthouse, water and whitewater separately in preparations for compositing. Learn how to set up an environment light, build shaders and set up AOVs for your final render.
11 | Composite the Render Passes
Learn how to take the render passes created using Mantra and bring them together using compositing nodes. Learn how to color correct parts of your shot using the passes to manage where the corrections appear.

CREATED BY

spev
MARK SPEVICK

Mark Spevick is the Head of 3D at Escape Studios, Pearson College London, and combines teaching with working at the highest level in the industry. He has 10 years working in industry and 6 working in higher education and teaching. He got his big break at Peerless Camera, the production house co-owned by Terry Gilliam, and worked on every Gilliam film from ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ to ‘The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus’, starring the late Heath Ledger. He also worked with director Martin Campbell on ‘Zorro’ and ‘Mask of Zorro’ before supervising on the set of ‘Casino Royale’. Mark also managed the CG team that worked on the parachute scene in ‘Angels and Demons’, on behalf of post-house Double Negative. Mark was heavily involved in the design and development of our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

More from Mark Spevick

COMMENTS

  • HerculesMare3 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

    thank you so much for this. Really usefull.

    • Infinity FX School of VFX 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

      Really Helpfull

      • Scara 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

        Mark, looking forward to learning from this. Cheers.

        • Kjellono 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

          Very nice. Thank you.

          • spev 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

            Thank you all for the kind comments. I hope you enjoy and pick up some tips.

            • CYTE 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

              Hey Mark,
              this tutorial is gold! Thank you very much!

              Cheers
              Philipp

              • ostaek 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                Awesome! Always appreciates any course from you

                • VFXMA 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                  Very nice. Thank you.

                  • stevestone35 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                    Much appreciated, awesome tutorial. Thank u ♥

                    • spev 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                      Thanks for all the kind comments.

                      • leizhao9050 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                        Thank you so much Mark. I have learnt a lot from all your courses.

                        • OneBigTree 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                          3h per frame? Mantra is horribly slow. I've been rendering sims like this with Redshift in minutes per frame.
                          Still great tut, nicely structured and very helpful.

                          • CalmFuture 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

                            Would you please let me know what is your exact PC configuration?
                            Looking forward to upgrade my system.

                            • khoa191288 1 year, 7 months ago  | 

                              Hello OneBigTree can you tell more about how to render using Redshift? I have had problems with Mantra too because it is very slow (even the quality is so good). Thank you so much!

                            • AFtelinagraphic 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

                              Frankly, your lesson was very good, short and gives the main points. I hope you will not skimp on me with lessons like these. Thank you.
                              MARK SPEVICK

                              • Parpa 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

                                Hey Mark, This is such a cool tutorial. Great job! Do you know if the pop wrangle you write to color the foam,bubbles and spray is not working in Houdini 19?
                                I also wondered what settings are used in the WWsource cache that you say is "low res". Thanks!

                                • alexroblesfx99 3 years, 1 month ago  | 

                                  Hey!
                                  I'm working on H19 and yes, it works! Check your expression well, maybe you wrote it wrong.
                                  "low res" was the cache he made it with 0.05 particlesep, and 0.025 the high res.

                                • Daniele2105 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

                                  I'm sorry, but I don't understand how you have create the whitewater cache in the end of lesson number 8. Thank's

                                  • SteeleDesmond 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

                                    Thanks for the great tutorial.

                                    At the start of section 3, you mention downloading the asset files to start with. Is there a link for those somewhere? I can't seem to find them from Google search.

                                    I can try to make it myself in the meantime.

                                    • rcbellergy 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

                                      @SteeleDesmond
                                      You can find the "DOWNLOAD PROJECT FILES" link on the top right of the page.

                                    • ShubhamRai 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

                                      Thanks a lot for this tutorial and thanks a lot to sidefx website which contains these awesome materials (tutorials) on there official web page

                                      • chimera_film 3 years, 3 months ago  | 

                                        Thanks for this great tutorial! A lot of useful information and tips&tricks! Here is my splash: https://vimeo.com/657853741

                                        • TangheStudent 3 years, 2 months ago  | 

                                          I i try select a watersourse (flip object) to use the whitewater in my setup it tells me no water is selected and then it doesnt do anything.

                                          • PavanBasrur 3 years, 2 months ago  | 

                                            Hey man, I was making the waves from part 3 of your series and I am using Houdini 19, there is no "VDB vector merge " node

                                            I think that they have moved it in my version..... (Houdini 19)
                                            can you please help and tell me where it is

                                            • spev 3 years, 2 months ago  | 

                                              Hi Pavan.
                                              The vdb vector merge is now called vdb vector to scalar in h19
                                              https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/sop/vdbvectormerge.html

                                              • spev 3 years, 2 months ago  | 

                                                TangheStudent...please try going into dops and selecting the flip object directly. That may help.

                                                • Nebojsa Visnjic 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

                                                  You should select WhiteWater in Particle tab NOT the ocean tab!

                                                • spev 3 years, 2 months ago  | 

                                                  chimera_film...looking great

                                                  • alexroblesfx99 3 years, 1 month ago  | 

                                                    Hey Spev!

                                                    I am working on a project like yours.
                                                    But I have a question, you in part 9 (SPRAYFX), you create a copy of the DopNet for the SPRAY.Okay, but... when you cache it, what do you do with the other cache that we already have from the WW?

                                                    Thanks!

                                                    • knockflakes 3 years, 1 month ago  | 

                                                      Thänx a lot for sharing your knowledge!

                                                      • pkmet 2 years, 8 months ago  | 

                                                        great quality, well explained - just fantastic, i absolved paid courses and tutorials and this one is gold - I really appreciate and recommend it!

                                                        • omergurkan91 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

                                                          Hey great tutorial! Love your confidence with this hard software and easygoing teaching style. I`m using Houdini 20 and it doesn`t have source particles checkbox in visualization tab for whitewater source. To see the red blue and green channels of my whitewater particles before baking. Do you know if I can still enable that? If I can, do you know where? thanks!

                                                          • cheesetroyer 9 months ago  | 

                                                            When caching the fluid - using the provided files - the fluid just falls below the waterline.

                                                            • kiponline3001 8 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

                                                              I am stuck at volume source step. I am using version 19.5. Volume Source don't have scale so my wave not tall enough. If i increase Source Scale at the end of wave when it break a little bit, particle keep going up.

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