Infinite Rig / Infinite Floor or Ocean + limit visibility

[Brezaling]

I stumbled across this interesting video of an Octane rig on YouTube that seems to allow you to limit geometry to the camera for large planes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_CCY0_uFbE

The comments are disabled and there's no contact info for the user so no luck finding out from them so far.
I'm interested in creating something like this with HOT4d ocean plugin. Does anyone know how this rig was achieved?

Or is there a way to limit the geometry sent to the GPUs based on what the camera sees to help with rendering?

I'm looking into using an Octane Scatter object with some seamless waves but the method in the YouTube video looks more useful to me.

Any leads or advice would be great.

B

[VVG]

cool rig,

The principle is similar to

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Waiting for a response from Ahmet

[Brezaling]

Wow. Thanks for this. Great plugin

[aggiechase37]

If I had to guess I would say that the plane is parented to the camera. And the texture is using an expresso rig of some sort to use the parameters of the cameras position and rotation to control the position and rotation data of the texture of the plane. (or something)

[milanm]

Hi

I posted that video as part of this conversation and, yeah, I made that rig.

I didn't use any Octane specific features and no plugins other than hot4d (and Octane). The main 'trick' is to move geometry together with the camera but also have displacements and other textures in world space coordinate system. I also wanted to have a smooth transition in polygon density based on the distance from the camera. So, to make this work with hot4d, I had to generate geometry in front of the camera somehow. I couldn't just constraint a single piece of geometry to the camera ( that's how that Infinite Ocean "plugin" works ). I solved that by cloning splines and using a step effector to spread them apart in the distance. Sorry I can't post the setup because it's part of a commercial project but It's not very user friendly anyway since I was the only user I had to worry about.



World space texture projection is the key to understanding how this works.

I could get into more detail if there's more interest. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. Also, there's probably a million better ways to do this depending on your project and I'm sure Houdini artists are rolling on the floor after seeing this, but hey, I had to get the job done in C4D. There's even a better alternative to hot4d now, but I didn't get a chance to try it yet. Hot4d can get a bit slow.

Regards
Milan

[Brezaling]

Hi Milan

Thanks for pitching in and all the detail you've given.

The spline step thing is a really good solution with the geo.
With hot 4d how do you world project the deformation? Is it using a bit of xpresso?

I sort of got a result with the plugin suggested in the first reply but the geo falloff is an issue - like you mentioned so keen to try your approach.

doing it in houdini would be thr best path but sometimes need to stick within c4d!

If you can advise on world projection of the hot4d deformation that help?

Cheers

B

[Brezaling]

I also started to play with the idea of using octane scatter object to distribute instances of some smaller ocean planes - but I couldn't think of how the planes could blend / merge - unless I created some sort of custom motion clip / point cache set up..

Not the best approach I'm sure but it would cut on geo load because of scattering. Need to do a few variations though to avoid repeat fractals.

[milanm]

With hot 4d how do you world project the deformation? Is it using a bit of xpresso?

Nope, no xpresso. That's why I underlined the word 'generating'. I'm deforming a Loft object. The Loft itself is not moving but the splines inside it are moving. That's the key to get world space deformation with hot4d. You can't transform the geometry, you have to move the polygons.

I also started to play with the idea of using octane scatter object to distribute instances of some smaller ocean planes - but I couldn't think of how the planes could blend / merge - unless I created some sort of custom motion clip / point cache set up..

It could work if you use a tileable texture sequence in AE (for example) for displacement. But you would need a 8k map and a lot of geometry to cover closeups so it's not worth the trouble. Maybe for lowres water in the background or behind the camera.

My 'theory' about this is that I have to avoid making polygons that are smaller than one pixel in the render. As soon as you do that, you are burning money.

Regards
Milan

[Brezaling]

How are the splines connected to the camera?

I don't understand how you can be moving the splines whilst the loft is static without using xpresso?

Splines are children of the loft to create geo, does that mean your Camera is also under the loft?

B

[Brezaling]

I know you can't share your build but can you show a screenshot of the object hierarchy to help explain the set up? Here or PM?

Or actually the main issue is projecting the HOT4D fractal in world space - how is that achieved as it isn't a setting that's openly available within the settings tabs for that object.

Cheers

B