So this scene was the start of the Cans journey of being littered then wash away and ending up in the Ocean. In my previs I had a simple scene of the can in the sand and then the shop in the background. I actually quite like this composition as it was like the can could still where the other can had been and it could conjure this feeling of them being so close yet so far. I also liked the colours I had used and wanted to stay on with that same sunset theme.
Reference
Before I started my scene, although I had my previs, I wanted to gather inspiration to give the scene that British beach vibe. So I found out about this free tool called PureRef that allows you to drag and drop images from the internet in to this little page and view them all together and it stays open all the time in the foreground which was super helpful when I was putting my scene together in Blender. So I used PureRef to gather these images below.
Scene Composition
So although I liked the idea of having the shop in the background, I knew this beach scene was going to be super heavy from the tutorials I had looked at. I thought adding the street in the background by importing it into the scene would have been too much. I wasn’t sure of a way to add it in, plus I hadn’t actually completed that “Outside Shop” scene yet so I didnt add it in the end. But it might be something I do in the future. However, I still wanted a sense that the can had been littered so thought it would be cool to add a sign in the background and a bin that looked like it was overflowing. So I actually just imported the bin that I had modelled for the “Outside Shop” scene. Then I simply modelled a sign that comprised of two cubes scaled to look like the pole and one that looked like the sign itself. For the sign part, I bevelled all four corners to make the edges smooth and rounded.
The bin already had materials on it, as I had made it for the other scene. But for the sign I found the image in the internet of a “Please Don’t Litter” sign and used that as the material. For the pole, I used a wood texture from Ambient CG.
So make it look like there was more rubbish in the area, I found a model of a collection of bin bags that I thought looked perfect.
The then needed a sandy beach texture, so found a texture from Ambient CG and used a Displace Modifier and a Subdivision Modifier to a plane, then used the Displacement Map to make it match the bumps in the image.
Then in the Shader Node, I added the other maps and the base colour that came with the downloaded texture.
From there I just positioned my camera and then imported the all important Can in to my scene
Beach Waves
Simulating the water was one of the more complex things I needed to do in my whole project. The actually setting up of the simulation was fine but getting it to look right was quite hard for me. I purchased the addon Flip Fluids for this.
I found a tutorial that helped me demonstrate how to set it up.
I firstly modelled a platform, this was just a cube and I added loop cuts and moved the verts around to create a slope. This Slope is to help generate the beach waves, it helps the water drag back like waves on a beach.
The I needed an object to push the water. This is the “pump”. This object was again use a simply cube with one bevelled edge to smooth it out. I then animated this object going up and down and copy and pasted those frames to repeat this motion. This object actually helps to generate the waves by pushing the water.
Then there were two more objects, with consisted of cubes. One was the water itself, and one was the Domain. The Domain is what where the simulation was contain and would not go outside this box.
I also added modelled rocks for the scene and used the landscape addon for that again. I textured them using textures from Ambient CG.
For the simulation to work, I marked which object was the fluid, the domain and the obstacles in the Flip Fluid tab.
Then I baked the simulation, at a low resolution of 65.
From there it was just a lot of playing around to make it look right. I changed pretty much everything from the first bake. I change the length of the domain, the size and height of the water, the size of the pump, how high the pump went in the animation, how low it went and the size of the slope.
One of the first issue was that where I had the domain to begin with, was too short for the scene. It mean that you could see the water crashing in the the wall of the domain, like there was an invisible barrier. Obviously this was not realistic so increase the length of the domain. Sometimes the pump was too powerful so he water was visibly pouring off the edge of the scene. So I had to strike a balance.
However, when I though I had struck a balance, when I would re-bake at a higher resolution, the water would look better but behave slightly differently. The waves again would go too far or not far enough.
So it just too ages to figure out!
I tried to also stay in a low res at first because the water make the scene SO SLOW. It was almost impossible to do or change anything when baked at a higher res and my computer would crash. So I did the animation for the can as best as I could at the lower res, knowing that the look of the water could change :/
So unfortunately this but was a bit tricky, as it was almost like a guessing game. I just moved the can and rotated it whenever the water come close to it. I make it looking like it was floating by adding a noise modifier to it.
After animating the can I bake at a slightly higher res then animated again, then baked at a slightly higher res until I hot up to a resolution of 350. This is when it became almost impossible to change anything and at this point I just hoped that the can was moving somewhat realistically.
Water Materials
In Flip Fluids, I ticked the Foam, Bubbled and Spray option and then selected the premade materials that came with it. From there, using my references, I adjusted the colour of the water so it wasn’t a vibrant blue colour. I wanted it to look like a proper British cold beach water. So I made it a kind of sandy colour.
Finishing Touches
I used the same HDRI for the Outside Shop scene so it looked like same time of day. I then used a low F-Stop on the camera setting and put the focus distance to where the sign was. Then I animated it so the focus distance was at the can. I wanted to really emphasise that this was the same can and it had just been littered.
Below are the final renders
Final Thoughts and Issues
I actually quite like the way it has turned out. However, I feel like there maybe could have been a better way to do the water simulation that yielded better results. But I think I would have had to explore Houdini which I had not time. I think this close up shot (above) the particles look a bit odd but I will say that my project is stylised so was never going to look ultra realistic. Also rendering this scene was a true nightmare. I did the usual thing of creating it in Blender 3.0 so it could be render on renderfarm, but because Flip Fluids is an addon, it was not possible to for renderfarm to pick up the simulation. So, because my computer was becoming a potato, I used the university facilities, but had to use about 5 different computers to get it to render on time. Some of those renders crashed so I never got the full scene. However, the renders I did manage to get were enough to put the scene together. It was a scene I actually nearly cut out because I thought it couldn’t be rendered. What I should have done, was do this scene in the summer, and render it at the uni the first few weeks we came back rather than leaving this one so late in the year.
Overall, I am glad I got to add it as it is a nice transition and an explanation as to how the Can ends up in the ocean.