This course, taught by Alvin Yap, is an in-depth look at creating an open ocean simulation in Houdini, rendered with Redshift and basic compositing in Nuke.

The course begins with a close look at the simulation geometry provided, followed by making the necessary optimizations and modifications to get them prepared for the ocean simulation. We’ll dive into aspects such as creating proper subframe data, as well as creating watertight geometry for complex objects.

Next, we will look into generating the main simulation using the Flip Flat Tank, and use simple yet effective techniques to create a realistic water effect. We then move on to creating and matching an open ocean using the Ocean Spectrum tools and touch on Redshift briefly to generate our open ocean render with displacements.

The next topic on the list is generating the white water elements for the flip simulation where we’ll look at the white water solver, and taking a surprising turn by using the white water solver only for the foam layer and creating a custom POPs sim for the spray and bubble elements. With the whitewater elements complete, we then look to generating volumes from the spray and foam elements.

We then get into rendering with Redshift, where we learn how to create materials and tweak them for our final look, then we’ll jump in between Nuke and Houdini and we figure out how to create various AOVs, mattes, as well as our own custom AOV in order to adjust specific areas of the comp. In closing, we’l look into separating some elements in the render so as to get a defocus effect in Nuke without artifacts as well as a quick overview on some quality settings in Redshift.