Guild of Writers

My age requires a convincing sea to really carry off the feeling of a tropical island. But I've looked at Andy's waveset tutorial and duplicated it and I'm still not happy with how it looks.

What would be the best way of doing a Nobolen-like sea in Plasma?

Reference: http://static.blogstorage.hi-pi.com/pho ... cheurs.jpg

Try playing with the waveset params some. If you're interested in looking at the Noloben settings, you can use PlasmaShop 3.0 beta, which can be found here, to view the settings.

Edit: Just to clarify, wavesets are the only way to go for water that looks like the Noloben's.

I would also recommend the following no matter what kind of ocean, sea, large lake, etc you are trying to make:

Lighting will really affect how your waveset looks.
Your Sky or Skybox texture will REALLY affect how your waveset looks.
Any colors you assign to your waveset will affect how it looks.

Now, this also applies to Noloben's waveset (and the Myst Island waveset from Myst V): the shape of your mesh that you are using for your waveset. The size of the poly faces, the number of the poly faces, etc.

If you import Noloben (or Myst Island) and look at their waveset meshes, you will see that it's made up like a bulls eye, or like a dart board: very large broad faces on the outer edges, which get smaller and smaller and more numerous as you get closer to the Island. (and you will also see that the mesh ramps up to where the level of the surface will be where it touches land).
AND...you'll see what looks like "swirl" lines, like a spiral. This is from the use of triangle faces.

So be prepared. Making a waveset that looks just like Noloben will require a LOT of thought and effort. Not impossible, but you'd better have a large pot of coffee waiting on you, as you'll be spending a lot of time exporting, converting (since you're using Max), linking in and looking, going back and adjusting, exporting, converting, linking in and checking, etc, etc, etc.

Good luck! I hope you get it as you're right, a good waveset done right makes any Age truly beautiful.