CompuServe Thread

#Reflections in the Water

7 messages in this thread
#187487From: Rich BarnettAug 27, 1995 10:56 AM
Anyone know of a good way to achieve nice, blurry, wavy reflections in water? I'm modeling a harbor scene and need to show reflections of boats, docks, etc in the ocean in a realistic manner. I tried bumping the reflection blur to the maximum value, but it still looks very harsh. Any ideas?
#187499From: david W. mennenohAug 27, 1995 12:25 PM
Rich, For really nice water you should get Yost's IPAS Botique #2. It's got an IXP for doing water that can be used as both bump and texture maps. In your material you can try increasing the reflection blur and see if that helps. You also probably want to use auto-reflection for the water, but just use flat-mirror on the top of a box object, which is your water. For getting a good start on waters settings, use the included meshes as starting points. Hope that helps some. DM
#187500From: david W. mennenohAug 27, 1995 12:28 PM
Rich, oops.. also meant to ask, if you don't have Water.ixp you could start with caustic.flc which is included on the WCT. If you want to take an image and make it wavy and blurry and then use that as either a texture map or reflection map on your water then I'd use Mirage. It'll let you generate very watery effects which you can then use as maps. DM
#187527From: Neil W. BlevinsAug 27, 1995 4:21 PM
Rich, To get a good water effect, you can try what's been suggested. But to increase the blur of the reflection, you might want to use a reflection map instead of a true reflection. Render your harbor without the water, bring it into a paint program and blur it there (Photoshop Gaussian Blur would be best). Then apply the reflection to the water as either a reflection or a texture at a low % value. This allows you to blurr the reflection as much as you want. – Neil 102226,3566
#187585From: Michael BassierAug 28, 1995 2:48 AM
The really best realistic looking water surface can be produced by using RayMan 1.5. RayMan can render blurry reflections and refractions and believe me: there`re many many ways to fake this effect but noone will look as real as a RayMan rendered images does. If you don`t need motion you can use RayMan 1.0. If you need to render to an animation you have to wait until the end of september for the new RayMan 1.5. Michael
#187617From: Andrew ReidAug 28, 1995 8:01 AM
>> The really best realistic looking water surface can be produced by using RayMan 1.5. If you would like to see an example, download COLDPIER.JPG from the ASHOWCASE forum. Andrew
#187631From: Stefan ElsnerAug 28, 1995 9:57 AM
>> The really best realistic looking water surface can be produced by using RayMan 1.5. << You may also see VENICE.JPG in the Autodesk Multimedia Forum (Lib 2). I didn't use any refraction for the water on that one. It's mainly just a box and a bump map. Stefan