Waterwall Effect... any ideas?

[c.klaassen]

Dear All,

 

I've got a difficult effect to try and create, with a few constraints that i need to stick to.

 

 

This link shows the effect that i am after.

 

A little info on my scene.

23ft Reception / Atrium with 2 walls that have water running down, Render time for the base render is already about the 2 hour mark so i need to render this effect as a separate pass.

 

The wall it runs down is a glossy tile.

 

Using Mental Ray and 3ds Max Design 2009. Compositing in After Effects CS4.

 

At the moment i am using a PFLOW with a noise map on instanced planes (with motion blur)

It kind of works but i'm about to try and see if the MR Ocean Map as an animated texture might do the trick.

 

Anyway if anyone has any theories, i'd be glad to hear them

 

Many Thanks

Chris

[jinsley]

use a single plane with many segments,

 

apply a noise modifier with small values to it,

 

make your water material and animate a transparency map to move vertically and repeat every 60 frames or so...

 

??? just a guess to keep it simple

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I'm wondering if you can create the distortion in post. I need to learn (even the name of) the new comp. tool. If it has a glass distortion type filter, then you should be able to render a grayscale pattern animation representing water surface, maybe a pass for spectral highlights and another for object mask. Then comp that on top of the final animation. It COULD be quick and easy.

 

OK, I just spent ten minutes messing around in there, it's possible. I spent most of my time failing to get it to show me a pretty preview or a good render. ... Here we go, I found the .exr it rendered. Ew, it doesn't look much better than the preview. I must have missed the "good" button.

[Paul Twyman]

Hey,

I'd do it all in the material too, no need to get complicated.

 

Just animate the offset on a noise map or similar and put it in the bump and opacity slot and maybe some others. Can use another noise with animated phase for one of the colours to make the water more realistic. Maybe use a gradient map with noise blended as well to make the water fade out and disperse as it gets further down the wall. Could maybe experiment with it in the mask slot of a blend material too if you wanna get more complicated.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jinsley]

quick test animating the vertical offset of a normals map on a clear material... not perfect but it gets the idea across...

 

[c.klaassen]

thanks for the input guys, i'll look into these ideas... lots to do!

[Nils Norgren]

Here is a tutorial I did several years ago for the Area,

 

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/pflow_for_a_water_wall_part_1

 

It is a little round about, but it gives great results. This would be a "Material" strategy.

 

-Nils Norgren - Neoscape

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I'm looking now at a material solution using a Standard material with a thin wall refraction map. Bump set to a narrow noise (tile x a bigger number than y). animate v offset. created a plane much too short with a number of horizontal stripes. apply planar uv. then edit poly the plane to the right size with stripes increasing in width as move down the plane; this stretches out the noise pattern to make it speed up as it falls further.

 

not testing now, but this really gives only one scale of disturbance, the fine regular ripples. This sort of thing also tends to have larger scale trends wash across it. blend in something larger, a big non-fractal noise moving on a diagonal, or maybe use cellular.

 

oh yeah, and my test scene has nothing for sparkly highlights or foaming. maybe a blend with a white material and a brutally curved version of the bump map.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

OK, my test animation isn't done but I want to go to bed, so the first 21 frames look... plausible. I am reminded to make the animated offset keys linear.

[c.klaassen]

Genius! Just what i am after...

 

Particles for me are the best way to create realistic waveforms, that you get from having some bits slower than others.

 

Many Thanks Nils!

Christiaan

[c.klaassen]

Need more processing powerrrrrr!!!!!!!!......