DynaWave

User Manual

DynaWave is a surface wave simulator. It will simulate ripples and wakes by just having objects fall into the water surface or by dragging them along.

Before you start let's define some concepts of operation.

DynaWave needs three types of objects to operate: A water surface, one or more effectors, and a wind source. The water surface is essential to operation but you can use DynaWave with either just effectors, just wind or both.

Water Surface

Effectors

Wind Source

To quickly see these 3 objects working at the same time, load the scene First.scn, load DynaWave, with the subdivided plane active in trueSpace press the 'Select Water Surface' button. Now press the Start button and watch! (You can stop at any time by pressing the Stop button or pressing ESC).

Now we can go into the workflow of DynaWave. The following is not a tutorial but a conceptual explanation of how DynaWave is supposed to operate. After reading this section you can go into the tutorials and understand what is happening as you proceed.

Water Surface

The water surface is the object that DynaWave will deform to simulate the water waves. This deformation occurs at the vertex level and can be recorded as vertex animation. The typical water surface is a subdivided plane. But planes are double sided in trueSpace so you have to use a better option. One way to do it is to create a cube and select the top face and subdivide it a few times. This will save lots of vertices and faces from a double sided plane, and will speed up the simulation greatly.

Step #1: Create a cube and subdivide the top face about 5 times.

Now you need to move the cube's axes so that is lies at the same height as the top face. DynaWave uses the axes position to determine where the water surface starts.

Step #2: Click on the axes button and move the axes up so that they are aligned with the top face of the cube.

Finally to finish your water surface just resize the cube to suit your needs. Be careful when flattening your cube, if you make it too flat, a low wave will go below the bottom face of the cube and that will show at render time. Once you have the size you want, press the Select Water Surface button.

Step #3: Scale water surface and select it in DynaWave.

Effectors

DynaWave works by using effectors that you drop into the water surface. The effectors have a spherical influence on the water surface. Basically it's like dropping spherical stones into the water. You can use any object as effector but DynaWave will treat it as a sphere. I recommend that you use DynaWave to create the effectors instead of using other objects. To create an effector just press the Create Effector button. A new object will appear and it will be named Effector,1. DynaWave will recognize an object as an effector if it is named 'Effector...' or if it is checked in the effectors list. Since DynaWave recognizes effectors by name, all effectors should have a different name (Effector,1, Effector,2, EffectorBig, etc.). If you end up with some effectors with the same name you can press the Refresh button in the effectors panel and DynaWave will attempt to rename them so that all are unique. If you ever find that an effector is not reacting with the water surface if might be due to having the same name as another one.

Step #4: Press the Create Effector button.

Each effector can be grouped, scaled, animated but not distorted. Any scale or vertex distortion will be ignored and the effector will be treated as a perfect sphere. At this point you must be asking how is it possible to simulate an 'odd' shaped object falling into the water. Simple: you use effectors to approximate the shape. This is highly effective since waves are not sharp but rather soft surfaces. A few effectors will allow you to simulate any shape easily as will be shown in the tutorials.

Step #5: Position your effectors as to approximate your object's shape.

Now you can animate your effectors. Make them go through the water surface to make ripple waves or drag them on the surface to create a wake. If you drag them try to keep half of the effector above the water.

Step #6: Animate the effectors.

Wind Source

If you want you can crate a wind source, but it is not necessary. You will have to create a wind source using DynaWave. Just press the Create Source button in the wind panel.

Step #6a: Create wind source by pressing button.

Now position the wind source where you want. DynaWave will simulate the wind move from the wind source to the water surface. By moving the source around the water surface you can make the wind come from any direction. The position of the source can also be animated.

Step #6b: Position the wind source and animate if necessary.

You can also set several parameters for the wind but we will get to those in one of the tutorials.

Running the Simulation

The final step of the setup is to adjust the water simulation properties. These properties will determine how the liquid will react. You can simulate all kinds of behavior, from mud and snow to molasses to water. The settings can be saved in a file for easy retrieval of your favorites.

Step #7: Adjust the water properties.

Amplitude: Determines how 'high' the waves will be.

Wavelength: Determines how wide the ripples are.

Speed: Determines how fast the waves propagate on the water surface. Faster waves will give the impression of a thinner substance while slower waves will give the impression of a thicker substance.

Decay: Determines how quickly the ripple's amplitude vanishes with distance.

Time Decay: Determines how fast the whole ripple vanishes with time.

Life Span: Number of frames that a given ripple event will exist. After that number of frames, starting at the frame when the ripple was created, DynaWave will not compute that ripple's propagation anymore. If this parameter is set too low you will see your ripples vanish suddenly.

After this setup (which sounds longer than it actually is), you can run the simulation by pressing the Start button.

Step #8: Run the simulation using the Start button.

You can watch how the effectors interact with the water surface and how the water reacts to them. You can stop the simulation at any time using the Stop button and resume where you stopped with the Continue button.

Expand your mind!