• Joined: May 7, 2016

Topic: Water Effects?

Hello All,
  I'm trying to make a series of animated shorts using wooden trains and boats (ala Brio, Thomas etc...).  As most of the action will be taking place at a harbor with cranes, container ships etc...  I'm looking for the best way to add water motion effects.  Namely, it just needs to make the boats look a little more realistic as they move through the water with bow waves and wakes.
  I tried using cellophane and various tricks during production but I ultimately settled on adding the water graphics in post-production.
  At present I'm using FOSS 2D editing tools  incl. GIMP, Inkscape and TUPI-2D for my visual effects though I'll probably move on to Openshot or similar for adding sound and other final effects.
  Can anybody recommend a good approach or plugin or tutorial that would help with adding subtle water effects (for bow wave effect etc...). In general, I try to use Inkscape as much as possible as I find the GIMP interface very frustrating at times.  Nevertheless, if there is a clear, accessible tutorial on achieving the desired effect with GIMP, I will gladly take it!

  Thank you very much and I look forward to hearing your input.

  • Joined: March 28, 2014

Re: Water Effects?

I assume you already shot your footage, correct? I would have said just use cellophane to complete the stop-motion-y effect, but motion graphics are a good alternative. I'm not really familiar with many motion graphics techniques, but my guess would to be either:

  • Make an invisible-masked wireframe model of your ship and a water simulator (maybe in Blender or some other 3D software), and let it render out the effects (which is quite hard actually, because the water might be unpredictable or you might not get the look you want

  • Find some effects online and composite them into the film

Fixing things in post is super hard (for me anyway, some people can do it it their sleep). Though, a small piece of advice: Don't rely so much on Inkscape. While I'm a huge fan of the software and what it does, it's still a vector graphics software, not necessarily a photo-realistic effect generator or image editor. It doesn't really handle large files the best. It's good for its purpose, but I wouldn't necessarily use it for effects. mini/wink

Sorry if I was absolutely no help! Good luck!

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  • Joined: August 14, 2010

Re: Water Effects?

I know that for his brickfilm Pirates!, Doug Vandegrift used a program called Squirlz Water Effects. He even uploaded a 2 part video tutorial showing how to use it a few years ago, found here: Part 1 Part 2.

I downloaded the program a few years ago to test it out and really liked some of the things you can do with it (even though it's quite easy to mess it up and make it look too CGI-ish). The website still seems to be up and running, so, I would recommend testing that out. Word of caution, though! - Make sure you don't download any of the "suggested" programs after downloading the installer. Those can be toolbars and such that you probably don't want or need. Just a heads-up.

https://i.imgur.com/Z8VtGae.png
  • Joined: May 7, 2016

Re: Water Effects?

Thank you for all the great suggestions!  I checked out Squirlz Water Effects and it certainly seems to work well for its stated purpose.  The effects it produces may be a little too realistic tfor my current needs however. 
  Basically it looks like I have three options open to me of which all have their learning curves.  The first option will be to continue working with Squirlz in the hopes of finding a more subtle effect and more importantly one that mimics a Kelvin wake/bow wave pattern.  The second option is to suck it up and slog my way through all the GIMP terminologies and plugins until I find one that comes close to what I'm looking for.  The third option is to develop a small library of wave effects under various opacities using Inkscape and to add them as layers through 2D animation tools like Tupi2d or Synfig. 
  The latter option has the smallest learning curve as I am well familiar with the tools involved.  On the other hand, the range of possibilities will likely be much more limited.  I'm very confidant that GIMP has all the capbility to do everything I need and more, but the learning curve is so steep that it may ultimately involve way too much time and frustration...
  I'll be sure to update this thread as the project progresses.  For the time being however, I'm probably just going to focus on the land-based scenes...