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How to make Ocean Waves in Cinema4D
Coming from Blender, I thought it would be as easy as it is there to create ocean waves in C4d. Sadly it is not! I am trying to recreate the sort of scene as this real life video of the waves crashing on the beach: https://youtube.com/shorts/47yOv9bOzh4?si=apdj85VvKPx8Epm6
Additionally, I’d love to try and get a product I modeled to wash ashore in that video above, haven’t seen any tutorials on here about getting rendered objects into real-life videos just yet! Would be so helpful especially with what brands like to advertise with!
I am following this tutorial to create the waves in Blender then export to C4D/Redshift, but I wanted to know if anyone knows an easy way to do it all in C4d: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21JMQECNMVE
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1 Reply
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Hey Kieran,
You’re absolutely right — coming from Blender, it can be a bit of a surprise that Cinema 4D doesn’t have native fluid simulation tools built-in (yet). Currently, fluid and ocean simulations in C4D do require third-party plugins like X-Particles, RealFlow, Liquigen, or importing simulations from Blender like you’re doing now.
That said, Maxon has confirmed a native fluid simulation system is coming in the next major update to Cinema 4D, which will make workflows like this much easier without relying on external tools. I’ll definitely be covering it after release, so stay tuned!
In the meantime, your approach of simulating the waves in Blender and exporting to C4D for rendering in Redshift is solid.
If you’re aiming to composite a 3D object into real footage (like having your model wash ashore), that’s more of a camera tracking + compositing job — tools like After Effects (with Camera Tracker) or Blender’s built-in tracker can help with that. Then, match the camera move in C4D to integrate your model realistically into the shot.
I mostly focus on motion graphics rather than VFX and compositing work, but I always try to create content based on member questions and requests, so I’ll see what I can do to help with this kind of workflow in future videos!
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