3ds Max/Vray rendering water?

[charliepower]

I'm trying to render a scene with puddles of water, I have two planes with noise modifiers, one with a ground texture, the other with a 'water' texture.

I also have a vray sphere light acting as a studio light and I would like this to cast shadows.

 

When the light is set to cast no shadows the water renders perfectly, however, when I turn shadows on it renders as a black lump. I've tried excluding the two planes but this makes no difference. I've tried ticking affect shadows in the material rollout, and unticking double sided, basically everything I can think of! Any more ideas?

 

 

I've attached the region renders as an example.

[SkylineArch]

The surface plane of water does not cast a shadow, it would be more the transparency of the water that would effect the light going through it.

[jasonstewart]

I am guessing that affect shadows in the water material is not turned on.

[charliepower]

The transparency hasn't changed, literally the only difference is 'cast shadows'. There is a fog colour to it, which would add shadows through the water, but I can't seem to get it to ignore shadows (or react to them in a visually similar way).

 

Affect shadows is on, but either way that makes no difference overall.

 

Any other ideas?

[Francisco Penaloza]

IF you are using fog in your water material you need to adjust the values, sometimes it get tricky depending of the scale of your project.

Creating water works better for me as single side polygon.

Check your normals.