You can see the displacement of the waves without rendering by adding a preview plane to the ocean shader. The preview plane does not appear in renders, but provides interactive feedback as you work in your scene.
Translate and scale it to preview different parts of the ocean.
The preview plane is actually a height field—a plane with the Displacement mapped to the wave height of the Ocean shader. For information on height fields, see Height Field.
Note: If you create an Ocean preview plane from the Ocean menu, the Y scale is already locked, and you get the desired scaling behavior. If you create a height field utility node directly, and connect it to the ocean shader, the y scale is not locked, and scaling in Y will cause incorrect displacement.
For more information on the height field node, see Help > Node and Attribute Reference.
To add a preview patch of ocean
- Select the ocean plane.
- Select Fluids > Add Preview Plane. Maya creates a preview plane called oceanPreviewPlane.
- In the Attribute Editor, modify oceanPreviewPlane, if necessary.
- Translate or scale the plane to preview different parts of the ocean.