aaOcean open sourced...

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aaOcean SuiteAuthor: Amaan Akram
The Open Source aaOcean Suite is a collection of Softimage ICE nodes and a mental ray shaders that implements Jerry Tessendorf's paper on simulating ocean waves, which is currently the most widely used method for open water ocean surfacemodeling being used in the industry.

This particular implementation presents itself as a 3D deforming grid inside Softimage, which then becomes the source of vector displacement map sequences that are sent to Mental Ray for final rendering. One of the benefits of using this approach is that it opens up the possibility of making other 3D objects inside Softimage react with the ocean grid via ICE. Another benefit is the speed that it brings in setting up your ocean right inside Softimage on a low resolution ocean grid to set basic paramters like wave height and speed, rather than rendering a sequence of images in Mental Ray. Works nicely in conjunction with Werner Ziemerink's Wave Curl.

local backup: aaocean.zip

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Hirazi Blue
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aaOcean open sourced...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 26 May 2012, 12:59

Amaan Akram has placed his aaOcean tools in the Open Source (GPL). The repository can be found here
This repository contains the following:

-aaOcean core class
-aaOcean Mental Ray shaders
-Shader Definitions for Mental Ray shaders
-aaOcean Arnold shaders
-aaOcean Softimage ICE deformer
-aaOcean Maya Deformer
-Houdini FFT node, which I used to port aaOcean as a deformer to Houdini
-several helper functions that I often use
(Quoted from here as well)
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ActionArt
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by ActionArt » 26 May 2012, 17:49

Great news! It's a fine tool as is but would be nice to see it developed further.

scaron
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by scaron » 28 May 2012, 03:10

amaan would like your suggestions on how to improve it. what do you think needs to be done?

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ActionArt
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by ActionArt » 28 May 2012, 05:46

It's been some time since I used it so I'll have to review a bit but one thing I remember is that it would be nice to add be able to add more detail to the wave foam. I used it for a high-res still and I had a hard time getting the foam to look good. Maybe it's just my lack of skill with it though :)

iamVFX
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by iamVFX » 28 May 2012, 06:54

scaron wrote:amaan would like your suggestions on how to improve it. what do you think needs to be done?
I email him a while ago about a crash when you tries to get surface normals in ice on SI2012 and above. Compiled version hasn't changed since then...

[rimg=300]http://screensnapr.com/e/rWQjvu.png[/rimg]

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 28 May 2012, 16:39

Is it just me (again) or does the version number discrepancy between the download version on the website (version 1.7) and the bitbucket version (2.5) indeed seem quite significant? It doesn't seem clear, however, what the changes between versions actually are and if it's already worth attempting a recompile from source for version 2.5.
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iamVFX
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by iamVFX » 28 May 2012, 16:41

I'll be appreciated if someone will compile it :)

amaan
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by amaan » 29 May 2012, 18:25

Hi guys,

Thanks for posting this here.

Yes, there's a version difference but not much has changed in functionality. A lot of code has changed, new ports added for other applications. Little has changed for the softimage ice node though.

The compiled version can be downloaded from
https://bitbucket.org/amaanakram/aaocean/downloads

The shaders have changed though.

-Normals shader does not exist anymore. It doesn't work well within the context of layered oceans. And Arnold generates normals quite nicely with auto-bump
-aaOceanData shader for mental ray and arnold. It outputs vector displacement as RGB and foam info in the Alpha channel. This sets up the foam to be in sync with the ocean surface, and conserves memory, evaluates faster. You'll have to use it in conjunction with the Vector Displacement shader from mental images that ships with XSI

I don't plan to make more changes. I may added a physically-based sea shader at some point, but not much else. If you have any suggestions, please do let me know.

cheers,
amaan

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caledonian_tartan
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by caledonian_tartan » 30 May 2012, 09:57

exciting release! cool!

i just don't get the aaOceanData shader working...

where do i need to put aaOceanMentalRay.dll and aaOceanShaderDefs.dll?

using aaOcean v2.5 on SI2013 WIN7 64bit
# ERROR : 2268 - This function is missing:
# <function: aaOceanMentalRay_oceanDataShader_2_5_Define>
Last edited by caledonian_tartan on 31 May 2012, 09:24, edited 1 time in total.
SI 2015 @ WIN7-64

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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 30 May 2012, 21:06

From my own attempt to get this to work, I'm afraid there might be something wrong with the dlls. I tried to add the whole folder as a workgroup, even placed all the dlls on the same level in this workgroup and finally loading them directly only results in errors for both the shader dll as the shaderdef dll. Even the Dependency Walker throws up some errors of its own (which never is a good sign, so to speak).
#:-s
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amaan
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by amaan » 01 Jun 2012, 08:47

sorry about these issues. I'll check over the weekend and report back

amaan
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by amaan » 03 Jun 2012, 21:26

Hi guys,

I just uploaded a new version, Rev079, to bitbucket

https://bitbucket.org/amaanakram/aaocean/downloads

Changelog:

-fixed shader defs not finding dll
-added ability to export ocean data as RGBA vector maps, object-space vector displacement in RGB, foam in alpha. This can be used to bake oceans into image sequences and then used with Mental Ray's own Vector Displacement shader. Arnold shader has the same ability.

Please let me know if you get any issues with this version

amaan

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bottleofram
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by bottleofram » 26 Feb 2013, 11:53

Hi guys,

Does anyone know where can i download the newest version of aaOcean? BitBucket denies me an access to the repository Amaan has been linking.

Thanks in advance.

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SamHowell
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by SamHowell » 26 Feb 2013, 11:56

You need to contact Amaan Akram and ask him nicely.

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bottleofram
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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by bottleofram » 26 Feb 2013, 18:44

SamHowell wrote:You need to contact Amaan Akram and ask him nicely.
Ok, thanks. Will do.

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Re: aaOcean open sourced...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 04 Mar 2013, 11:35

So, after being sent to Bitbucket by Amaan Akram's website, registering there and after that being told that I still couldn't access the files, I would really like to know what's going on here. It feels like I've simply been tricked to register at Bitbucket. This seems to be a new interpretation of the concept of "open source" I wasn't previously aware of... If the files are only available "on demand", maybe mr. Akram should take down the Bitbucket link from his website.
:-?
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