Water Research Simulation in Unreal and Maya - Summary and Conclusions

On this entry I'll try to summarize my experience with different water simulations techniques to date. Note that this is the result of a student's research only so please put big quotes on everything I'm saying.
The techniques researched can be divided into two sections depending on the subject:
-        Simulation of the water planes, for “static” waters.
-        Simulation of “dynamic” water, for water splash effects.

Also they can be divided depending on the technology:
-        Maya
-        Unreal Engine

The most relevant techniques for the Animation Project were:
-        Unreal Engine’s Starter Pack Water materials, for water planes.
-        Maya’s Bifrost simulation combined with Mesh conversion and Alembic Cache export, that is imported as Geometry Cache in Unreal, for the water splash.

The summary of techniques researched are as follows:
Name
Type
Technology
Comments
Maya Ocean Shader
Water Plane
Maya
Nice easy approach.
Didn't try to export to Unreal Engine.
Octoplug Ocean Shader
Water Plane
Maya
Good results but complex application through Node Editor and very limited online documentation. At least for a novice like me, more suited for somebdoy with experience.
Didn't try to export to Unreal Engine.
Bifrost Simulations
Water Splash
Maya
Particles dynamic simulation.
Great posibilities.
Possible approach to export to Unreal: convert to Mesh and export as alembic. Then import it into UE as Geometry Cache.
Unreal Engine Starter Pack Materials
Water Planes
Unreal
Nice easy out of the box materials.
Need a bit of adaptation when changed the default geometry.
Unreal Engine Gestner Waves
Water Planes
Unreal
Mathematical Approach to simulate the waves on a water plane by the use of sin and cosine functions. Looks very powerful, although complex to implement, I didn’t finish the research on them.

Final Output: different recordings were done in Unreal Engine. All of them were done setting up a Bifrost simulation in Maya, exporting to alembic as a mesh, and importing into UE as Geometry Cache.







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