rough ocean

#1 Hello Michael.
Your post peeked my interest and I know it's possible to do in Lightwave using Nodes. But rather than make a model or plugin to demonstrate, I thought I'd Google search to see if this has been done before.

Sure enough, I found a link at NewTek where you can download the GPL license plugin for Lightwave that includes the source code ( for the plugin).

There are several links you can check out and within the .zip files is a movie of the rough ocean surface demonstrated for you.

#2

Quote:
but most annoying the flat horizon lines (from sea behind) are visible through the waves. Only when the camera is very close to the water.

I'm assuming you're using a ScatterSky since you mention horizon line. That is a known result of how the ScatterSky is designed. It has to be worked around by either level design (not being able to see the horizon), setting the canvasClearColor to one that matches the terrain/ocean edge color, using the ScatterSky Z-Offset Hack Resource, or use a SkyBox.

Rough Ocean? Adjust the settings.

Foam: an earlier version of T3D had wave foam, the feature was removed because it didn't play well with specularity or lighting -- I think. There is still a shore foam effect, but only in Advanced Lighting.

#3 Depending on how comfortable your are with the source. You could always try doing this developer.amd.com/media/gpu_assets/ShaderX_OceanWater.pdf
I don't know much about the waterblocks.