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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)

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

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

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

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]

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.

I'll be appreciated if someone will compile it

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

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

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>

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).

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

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

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

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.

You need to contact Amaan Akram and ask him nicely.

SamHowell wrote:You need to contact Amaan Akram and ask him nicely.

Ok, thanks. Will do.

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.