I need to create a huge wave that is on the verge of breaking. My first approach was to:

1. use ocean tools to create a flat ocean then bend it to create the big wave
The problem with this is that the vector displacement is created before my bend deformed so at render time it displaces in the wrong direction. This wouldn’t be a huge issue but since emitting spray from the crest of the wave the sop geo and render displaced geo need to line up..

2. Bend deform the geo first then orient the waves along the geo using wave instancing.
This should work but the baked displacement map seems to be essentially a vertical projection so the overhanging wave causes problems (I’ve created my uvs before any deformation so that’s not the issue). Maybe it’s the way the maps are generated inside the ocean evaluate using vop2cop and just working with 2d volumes?

- it also just seems to write those volumes out rather than baking it back to the uvs - so it doesn’t respect your input uvs..

I know this is a relatively common effect (making huge waves) so what would be the best approach?

You might be interested in the Hero Waves section of this video - Houdini 16 Masterclass | Ocean Tools - starting around 30 minutes:

https://vimeo.com/204806144 [vimeo.com]