I was watching a Blender tutorial on how to make an object float and was disappointed that their solution was more clever than “simulate it,” because I wanted to learn how to simulate it. Disappointment at a lack of a one button solution aside, this got me thinking I could do it in flame.
I give you a 1000 frame clip of a log floating on water, all done in flame, with the only animation being the camera.
please enjoy.
I hereby name this ship Bob.
explanations, caveats, etc:
So the way this works is I make a log (pictured above) and attach a camera to it with the far clipping plane set to the center of the log. Then I render the displaced water card with no color or shading out through that camera. This creates a shape of the waves right where they interact with the log. I combine that with two vertical lines around where the ends of the log are and track the resulting image.
Once tracked, I apply the Y position and rotation to the log and it floats in the water.
To make the log look heavier I used two water cards, one for rendering, and another that was blurred for tracking. The blurring removes the higher frequency bits but keeps the overall rolling aspect.
This is not something anyone should bother with in flame. the limits of 3d in the software are stark, and after proving I could do this I decided not to bother with my secondary thoughts of seeing if I could add ripples or whitecaps via top-down projectors. It’s fun to mess about, but you’ll always end up with an image that looks like a PS2 rendered it.
Are you working in LogSea3 or LogSea4 here?
You are a god amongst men for that one @BrittCiampa
As a non english-speaker ,I spent five minutes thinking in what the hell this is related to a log gamma curve. 
Brilliant @BrittCiampa! I would add that it’s half float.
