A job I was involved in from start to finish. I came in early to model a wave frozen in time. Generated a few models of the wave working together with the concept artist to build a form that would be physically plausible but also artistic.

Once the client approved the concept starting modeling and lookdev on the wave. As its a static wave I decided to use a UV map driven approach to creating the wave. This way I could combine maps etc to create a look that I wanted and also upres maps and move geometry without changing the form of the waves as even small changes to the world position would dramatically change the effect Houdini’s waves would have on the shape of the wave.
Keeping all the build in Houdini allowed us to play around with the shape of the wave even when we were working on shots way past the lookdev stage. I preferred the original breaking wave design as it looked more dynamic but eventually the clients decided to go with a more sculptural wave mountain.

For Lighting and Lookdev I chose to go with HTOA as it gave me straight up better renders out of the box. Especially with Refraction and SSS thrown into the mix. It was a steep learning curve but I think it worked fine in the end. The team was Mantra heavy but with some help from Anthony Bloor and his Arnold chops we got across the bridge.