Water simulation has always been the holy grail of FX, requiring an incredible amount of computation to get right. For Battleship (2012), ILM had to reinvent their water systems to allow them to be able to deliver the show with it's plethora of shots in water.
The alien ships are hundreds of feet long and therefore displace massive amounts of water. This, coupled with them making aggressive movements meant that hundreds of millions of droplets of water had to be simulated per shot to get a believable look of water interaction.
Before their new water systems, artists were only able to get "1-2 simulations done per day", but with the new system they were able to "do many simulations per day", increasing the iterations and therefore the creative freedom and expression for the artists.
ILM has since reworked their water systems multiple times, now being more powerful and accurate than ever, utilizing more powerful hardware and more accurate and efficient simulation algorithms.
Today, water simulation is something that can be done a lot easier than before, even being able to do it in real-time with tools such as Unreal Engine and LiquiGen. Houdini is currently the most powerful tool for simulating water or any FX at very high fidelities.
Check out some FX flipbooks from ILMs VFX breakdown showing their water work below:
「 landing on the lake 」
秘密の惑星へ着陸🪐✈️
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Modeler : wanoco4D @wanoco4D
FX Artist : Yota Tanabe @yotatanbe
Compositor : Kai Inoue @KnowAudioIt#三次元無双