Wondering if anyone had some insight as to how you would go about making surfer style ocean waves. So far the only method that has worked at all has been to pre-animated a piece of geometry and use morph targets or vertex animation. But what I would really like is to have something dynamic and potentially interactive like the volumetric cloud painting demo or any of the examples under the shaderbits fluid sims examples.
I’ve seen a pretty decent example from this guy but he hasn’t been available for contact so far:
Having crashing waves is one thing, having an ocean with crashing waves where exists some kind of fluid simulation and that you can surf on them is another thing. In the world of games, things looks like they are simulating, usually they don’t, they fake it by approximation. Simulation for this magnitude is doable, but would not have performance enough to be used in general and in games, unless highly tweaked for an specific game as @darthviper107 mentioned.
If you are really into seeing simulation I would tell you to take a look at Houdini. You can create a simulation there and import into Unreal. If what you want if really to have interaction with the waves, then another approach is needed.
