Maya: Floating on Texture Waves

.... or: A boat in the ocean. This tutorial is the spin-off of a question I got: When using a texture deformer, i. e. a texture which actually deforms geometry, can we let a boat drift on that geometry?

   • Maya  – Texture Deformer  

Well, the texture deformation is something special. It resides between the Displacement Map and the actual ocean/water module which Maya provides. Its advantage is that it is very light in terms of performance. Actually, there is no other way to create waves of water more rapidly as with the texture deformer.

The key to putting a boat on the texture deformed surface is to constrain it with, for example with the Point on Poly command. The Surface constraint is also good.

For displacement shading see:
   • Maya – Arnold Displacement 1 (more to...  

For a more funky texture deformer tutorial, using MASH, see:
   • Maya: Funky Jumps [Texture Deformer a...