How to achieve Photo real water? (pond, lake, etc)

[aashroff]

Hey all,

 

I was watching the gnomon dvd (Environmental lighting/modeling for production) and saw some really cool animated water. Unfortunately he doesn't talk about how he went about making it.

 

For those who are not familiar with the DVD:

 

EDIT: can't post links, But you can see it on the gnomon workshop website.

 

I am working on my demo reel right now, and it would be great if i could achieve water that looks that good.

 

It is animated, and i am using vray. What would you reckon is the best way to do this?.

 

Any help would be really appreciated!

[magnuscarta]

I would use an animated noise map in the bump slot.

[aashroff]

Thanks you for the reply.

 

I tried doing it with the noise map. Maybe i am doing something wrong. Is there any tutorial on this that could point me towards?.

 

(i got the water to animate, but the material does not look that great)

 

What kind of material should i be using?, Vray/Standard/Raytrace?

 

Again, i appreciate your help a lot. Thank you very much!

[alrawli]

The book Understanding the Elements is great for ocean river and water materials. Well worth a read as it goes into some depth about the materials and geometry of water.

 

For the material i use a distance mask in the bump slot with smoke as the ripples and usually have this set quite low. Water is quite reflective so i use falloff for the reflection and set this to fresnel, if its scanline or MR i set the reflection to raytrace in the second slot in the front side falloff parameters and within that i use the environment or a sky image as the background. Alot of the colour you get from water is the sky relflecting in it rather than the water being coloured. The diffuse colour i normally keep really dark, dark blue/grey/brown usually works well.

 

Hope that makes some sense. If your using Vray theres a couple of good ocean materials on Vray Materials.de with a bit of tweaking they work well for rivers.

[Claudio Branch]

I have found that using an animated Noise modifier on the geometry representing the water surface to be quite effective. Especially if your camera is very close to the body of water.

 

The geometry needs to have a nice face count to modulate the vertices' z-values. And usually, the motion needs to be subtle, just enough to show a little movement and distortion of any reflections on the surface.

 

Less is More.

[F J]

this is my first animated water test (file1 file2) accomplished with a Noise Modifier..

 

[nisus]

Use the MR template water. If you want more clear water (like a pool) check out Zaps blog.

 

rgds,

 

nisus