animating shoreline..? rare?

[Ge4-ce]

Ok, I found lots of tutorials for modeling a sea-surface.. even storm, and other water thingies..

now.. A bit more chalenging.. how do we animate a shoreline ?? I mean the waves clashing into the beach, or agains rocks...

the foam on the water, the undertake...

what would your approache be? I have NO idea where to start..

-Particles? with collision stuff?
-displacement maps?
-morphs?
-Motion designer?
-...

creating one still image is not that difficult, but making a realistic animation... pffff... wow..

any ideas?

[hunter]

I'm with ya'. I've been tryni' since I got into animation. It's like the holy grail. I've still not seen a wave break on the shore by anyone. even the Perfect storm cuts away before the waves actually break over themselves. Good luck.
Here's a couple of tests I did using morphs and particles. Maybe If I kept tweaking...
Sorry I'm not more help.

[Lude]

I think someone did something like this in lightwave with apple macs hopping about on a beach.

[hunter]

Yeah That was great stuff but they weren't really big breakers just little waves lappin' at the shore.

[Lude]

just done a quick test. i have never animated water before never mind a wave.

any way it's doggy but it is a first and done in about 30min
http://www.netramedia.com/lude/wavetest.zip

lude

[mattclary]

It was Click Grafix, called iBeach. They were going to do a tutorial, but it never materialized.

http://www.clickgrafix.com/services/cgx2002_animations.htm

http://www.clickgrafix.com/clipart/ibeach_snap1.jpg

[Ge4-ce]

Ok.. I've started.. This is a VERY VERY first move in animating a shoreline..

I need to overthink this again.. but so far.. I came up with this idea:

I will make a combination with particles (hypervoxels), morphs or displacements..

For example.. I have to split up the action of a wave into different pieces.

1: the wave comes => displacement map
2: the wave starts to turn over => morphing?
3: the wave breaks and splashes on the beach => particles

now, for the last part, I've done a very small test:

I'm not able to post the movie.. working on that.. (have nu webspace and no winzip on Macintosh.. )

Any ideas?