#How to do water?
6 messages in this thread
Hi, I am a new Animation:Master user (on the PowerPC). So far I think its a
wonderful program. Of course, I want to do the hard stuff right off the bat.
I have been trying to create convincing water. I can get the wave texture in
Character to look like ripples in a pond, (which, by the way, looks great) but
I can't get the real random look that happens on a lake. (i.e. the user
shouldn't be able to see where the source of the ripples are.)
Does anyone know the trick?
Also, in browsing the libraries, its seems like everything in there is a
rendered graphic or a finished animation. Will there be sample models is the
future? (trees, mountains, etc)
Again, this is a great program, and I can't wait to see the Font utility and
the Post Processing Program.
Thanks in advance, Jim Jonah Electric Studio, Inc.
Jim-
If you wanna take the time, you can create a lake out of a grid of splines.
Then simply pull up various points here and there throughout your animation.
Also, try using Roughness with Specular. I'm not sure if changing the
roughness during an animation will create the 'sparkles' on the water, but it's
worth a try. A third alternative is to create a series of specular maps with
random dots on it.
Hope that helps ya! Let me know if it works out.
-Kevin
re:"I have been trying to create convincing water. I can get the wave texture
in Character to look like ripples in a pond, (which, by the way, looks great)
but I can't get the real random look that happens on a lake. (i.e. the user
shouldn't be able to see where the source of the ripples are.)
Does anyone know the trick?"
You need to have multiple wave sources (I think I used all five), set at
different levels of excitement. This will give you the random look you're
after.
Gavin.
Jim,
Let me know when you figure it out (about the water). It seems to me one would
need to create a long complex morph sequence, and that there is no simple
trick. Once one had a good library of water however, I would imagine one could
sell it to other users. Like I said, let me know if you do figure out a
"trick".
Douglas, The water is something I keep coming back to when I'm not buried in
other projects. Right now I'm finishing up a CD-ROM catalog for the 1995 Neon,
so I don't have much free time.
I was excited about the fact that A:M has five wave generators, but when I mix
two or three together, it just looks like a big moire pattern. It seems like
the right combination of generated waves should work, but the experimentation
time involved is a killer, so I was hoping someone had solved the problem and
was kind enough to share the answer.
I saved your message and will let you know if I get close.
If you don't mind me asking, what types of projects are you using A:M for?
Jim Jonah. Electric Studio, Inc.
Jim,
I'm a fine artist and got the program to do stills as mock-ups for
large paintings, ie architectural details that I need to make up and cast
specific types of light on. It saves a lot of time.
But I've become disastrously interested in making animations –
disastrous because I am neglecting my painting and have tons of backed-up work.
Right now I'm making a little joke film of an alien tourist throwing a
can, and thus littering, onto another world from his dinky spaceship. He is
pursued and destroyed by the local police. This little project has taken a
fair ammount of time because the alien sheriff and the hand that comes from the
ship are both done using the inverse kinematics – very lifelike and
convinceing, but time consuming to assemble. The landscape was fun to build
and I got a great distant water effect by just leaving holes in the landscape
(where the water is) and letting the background color come through.
I was interested in your question about water however, because I was
just wondering about it myself the other day, and thinking the thing – making
convincing water effects – would be fun in itself to create. I don't know
about you but the only computer generated water effects I've seen have been
pretty lousy. I'd love to have a library of different types of water: ocean,
lake, windy day, etc. Also a good effects of boats cutting through water would
be very useful.
Thanks for writing back and do let me know if you get close. What do
you use the program for?
Douglas