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I'm trying to add realism to this image of ships at sea.
How do I make boat wakes that look like they are on the waters surface and generated by the ship?
I've tried clipping parts of bow waves from other images and inserting them here, I've also tried drawing the wave and wake shapes in illustrator and blending the waves with warp and glow.
None of my efforts have achieved the realism I'm after.
You can add the missing waves by inserting displacement maps and painting some foam onto the generatd waves.
Here is a displacement map. It's made a little transparent only to show its placement. It's painted (for the corvette only) by free hand using a soft white brush.
The map generates wrinkles to the sea. They must have some foam. It's again painted. Also painted some foam to the bow because it must be equal on the port side and starboard.
BTW. The aircraft carrier is miniscule. The perspectives of the sea and the ships are not well matched.
ADDENDUM: I couldn't find any plausible arrangement for the ships except by squeezing the carrier to the horizon. Sorry.
Since all the ships have a wake.... you'll have to extend the wakes. Wakes are long trailing disruptions in the water, not merely "halos" around the ships. The lack of any disruption behind the ships makes things look unnatural.
Or.. use images of ships which aren't generating a wake. But they will then appear static and "parked" in the water.
