After graduating with a first-class computer science degree, Paul Hatton has spent nearly 20 years working within the world of 3D visualisation
Creating ocean and beach scenes can be one of the toughest jobs around. There are just so many different components at work including displaced surfaces, numerous textures, foam requirements and vegetation, then there's the not so small task of trying to get everything lit correctly.
This all contributes to a pretty daunting challenge. And if you start trying to visualise below the water's surface then the challenge becomes infinitely harder.
Over the years I've worked on a number of different types of oceans with various software and renderers. I've found Chaos Phoenix one of the best options for generating realistic water surfaces, but we don't have that plugin for Blender. A plugin is nice to have but not essential.
In essence, all oceans boil down to a displaced surface. The way that surface is displaced can take on various forms including geometry displacement or material displacement. The waves and how they move and respond to their surroundings is another factor that the
