#making water
11 messages in this thread
I'm writing an article for CGW on making realistic looking water. Does
anyone have any expertice on this topic who would like to share any
hints, insights or examples? My deadline is next week so a quick
response would be appreciated.
I made some water animations in 3DS and with RayMan.
If the water doesn`t flow and you have to look through the water:
make a plane with GRID, apply a (animated) bump map. Make the
material very transparent, give it a (extreme) little touch of blue
and make it a little bit reflective. Under the water plane place an
other plane with a ground mapping (ocean ground or a ground of a
swimming pool or whatever you want). You should make the ground
mapping with a warping program like Elastic Reality. Than render a
sequence of distorted images and use them as an animated ground
mapping. Then you should use a projector light with the caustic flic
to illuminate your ground mapping.
This works fine for a lot of jobs. If you want really perfect water you need
realistic refractions and multi reflections. You need a raytracer like RayMan
(<g>)!
You should buy RayMan (the 3D Studio raytracer). If you have it make the
following additional to the things described above: give the water material a
nice reflection map (for e.g. a sky). Then load the material into the RayMan
material editor and set the REFLECTION MAP RATIO to 0.5. That means that RayMan
reflects 50% of the reflection map and 50% of the 3D scene. Set the INDEX OF
REFRACTION to 1.333 (or higher).
Hope this gaves you some little tips…
Michael
>> I made some water animations in 3DS and with RayMan.
Does this imply that Rayman can render animations. I didn't think it could.
Andrew.
Andrew,
<< Does this imply that Rayman can render animations. I didn't think it could.
>>
Michael is working on supporting animations in Rayman for r2.
Mark
You can make animations with RayMan Release 1 if you output any frame of your
animation as a single 3DS file. Then render the images with the RayMan batch
mode.
BTW: I'm already using RayMan (pre- pre- alpha version) Release 2.
Michael
Michael,
Glad to hear animation is on the list for Rel 2. Rayman is a great product even
without it!
Can you share any more release 2 features?
Andrew.
Hi Andrew,
>>Glad to hear animation is on the list for Rel 2. Rayman is a >>great product
even without it!
Thank you very much!
>>Can you share any more release 2 features?
Well, not all but a few:
– ANIMATION RENDERING
with special optimizations to reduce rendering times
of course: field-rendering and motion blur
– MUCH FASTER
pure raytracing is up to 4 times faster
A-Buffer (renders non reflective/transparent materials as fast as
3DS does)
– LESS MEMORY REQUIREMENTS
– BETTER IMAGE QUALITY
– MORE 3DS FEATURES
reading PRJ files, more mappings (even animated), softshadow settings can be
different for each light…
and much more…
Michael
Great info. Thanks. I've never ray traced something like this. The time payment
seems too extreem. But maybe it isn't. How much longer is ray tracing an image
like this?
Nevertheless, thanks for the details.
Gregory
Well, makeing images or even animations in this way pumps up the rendering time
"a little bit". But it`s always the same: the better the image the more time it
takes to render. But the image will be worth the time…
Michael
Gregory:
Download the file H2OBMP.ZIP from lib 2 — it was created by Dave Aguilar
76260,453 (so you might want to contact him). There is a little about how it
was created in the lib description, and apparently it was created for the NAAUG
telecourses. It looks pretty nice — the file includes both an animated bump
map, and a flic showing it in an animated pool.
Also, Ed Kellerman has done some weird/interesting fluid-y effects.
Dave
Greg,
Nothing to do with 3DS but there are a couple of articles in
Computer Graphics Vol 20 No 4 (SIGGRAPH proceedings) about making
realistic sea waves which do things like change direction to match the
coast-line and change wavelength and shape with water-depth.
Andrew.