Water Textures

[Dave Donley]

Here is a water texture made from accurate glass reflectivity, refraction set to 10%, mirror factor cranked up, transmission turned down to emphasize the reflections. Waves are from the wrapped leather bump shader with all amplitudes except fold amplitude turned down to 0%. Cast shadows turned off to help speed.

The mirror is turned up on this, for more reflections the refraction could be turned up, or the transmission turned down. For less reflections the mirror factor could be turned down.

Please feel free to post your own water textures here too!

EDIT: Dark and bright water variants, dark for landscape ponds, etc., bright for tap water.

EDIT: Turned the refraction down to 10% again, I believe that is the correct value for all cases. You should be able to use this texture for single-sided or double-sided cases. For ponds, etc. use just a single textured 3D polygon for the top surface.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Dave Donley

[cad@sggsa]

This is Awesome....photo quality.

Thanks Dave

[ionw]

... wow!

Thank you!

[cad@sggsa]

The textures I have works well for flat surfaces.....

What I'm trying to get is a texture for water in a fountain...(see attached)

Need it to be that white colour yet not to solid and look like water, not pieces of rope.

Used nurbs curve tool and extruded along path, this gives a good reprasentation, just the texture makes it look un-real.

[Ray Libby]

Have you tried to make an image prop? Probably not feasible, but you never know.

[cad@sggsa]

Will post the result I made in the tread Render Quility under RenderWorks...+/- 2h from now.

That could maybe work, but I'm pushing VW here to see what I can get out.

(EDIT)

We had a power failure due to bad weather. Won't be able to post today.

Edited December 5, 2008 by cad@sggsa

[billtheia]

Dave,

I really like your water texture but I can't get it to show shadows or reflections.

In the attached file, I drew a 10'x10' "pond" with a 2'x'2 obelisk in the center. I added a camera and single light. I expected the obelisk to cast some kind of shadow and I expected to see a reflection of the obelisk in the water. Do you know how I might change the texture or my model to make these things appear?

Thanks.

[gmm18]

Hey Bill,

I just played with the file you posted.

Changing only the angle of view (to have a lower incident angle to the water) I got this:

[billtheia]

Thanks gmm.

I fiddled with the textures a little bit and found that turning the refraction up a little bit (20%) also helps. Also, reflections are more clear when using the darker version of the texture because it has lower transmission setting.

Attached image 1 uses texture as provided. Image 2 uses 20% refraction.

[gmm18]

Nice.

Tempting to put a moat around my buildings just so I can get some cool renderings...

[billtheia]

GREAT idea.

Dave's water texture looks even better with an HDRI background (see attachment.)

[cad@sggsa]

Hi Bill

The Texture worked well with the HDRI I used in that project last year. So I make conclution that It works beter with a darker background and a light source applied. when HDRI is used no extra light source needed, just the angle needs adjusting.

Attached is another job coming up we will be doing. The stage(where the dome sits on) is standing in a pond and the seating is a racked pavilion over a top pond/trough.

I did use the same HDRI as last.

[billtheia]

Looks great. That water is really convincing.

[cad@sggsa]

I have kind-off made more work for myself as my boss will now always expect this quality and chop-chop.....these take time, some long nights at office ahead for me...bleh!!

[billtheia]

Yes, but I find that I'm getting faster at it as I do more renderings. I too have had some long nights but they are often the product of trying to figure something new out. Also, I spend a bunch of time simply waiting for a test render to run.

If the boss is asking for more of this, you might want to try and make a case for upgrading to VW2009 (and maybe a faster machine.) You'll likely make back the investment in time saved. You could get an evaluation copy of 2009 & run some tests to see if your tasks are indeed completed faster.

[cad@sggsa]

Would seem that I need to upgrade to 64bit as I want to run C4D, aswell as getting atleast another Gig of RAM.

I'm currently happy with VW12 and only now getting to use the full program from being informed on here.

My long nights was just cause the client has no sence of how long it takes so they need it by the next day or they have left it to the last minute. So to do a full layout and say 4 renders in one day....what happened with the job posted above (dome at pond)

[oli w]

Hi Guys....do any of you use 2011? The edit box has changed a bit and im not sure how to put the same settings as above (20% refraction and change the angle of view...)

[Dave Donley]

Hi oli w:

For water in 2011 I would use a very dark color (because the Glass shader works best with dark color shaders), a Glass reflectivity, and Glass transparency with refraction set to 1.3 for water, Noise bump with large texture size and small strength to show some waviness.

Here is a 2011 file to use, with a perfectly clear water and a water that will get darker with depth like for ponds. The absorption distance and color in the Glass transparency shader is used for this - as the ray goes further past the textured surface the color becomes stronger.

There is only a single 3D polygon on this model to represent the water surface of a pool. The ray from the renderer will hit this polygon, and think it is going into water and staying in water. This is correct for things like pools. For sheets of water you need two surfaces, so that the ray goes from air to water on the first surface then water to air on the second one. For example you may use an extruded rectangle for a waterfall this way. (It's the same for glass too)

Cast shadows was turned off for the clear water to save time. Both textures have indirect lighting turned off to save time, since these clear textures will not contribute much diffuse lighting to other objects when they are lit.

Edited May 12, 2011 by Dave Donley

[oli w]

Thanks Dave, I forgot about this thread because I used the original file, and just increased the size 100 times, that seemed to produce a pretty good effect, but your file is an improvement again so Ill be using that in the future.

[Kaare Baekgaard]

Both textures have indirect lighting turned off to save time, since these clear textures will not contribute much diffuse lighting to other objects when they are lit.

Hi Dave

I never considered using this feature. Do I uncheck the 'Emit Light' option only or both?

Edited May 30, 2011 by Kaare Baekgaard

[Dave Donley]

Hello Kaare:

I have both emit and receive turned off in the texture.

[cad@sggsa]

Here is a water texture made from accurate glass reflectivity, refraction set to 10%, mirror factor cranked up, transmission turned down to emphasize the reflections. Waves are from the wrapped leather bump shader with all amplitudes except fold amplitude turned down to 0%. Cast shadows turned off to help speed.

The mirror is turned up on this, for more reflections the refraction could be turned up, or the transmission turned down. For less reflections the mirror factor could be turned down.

Please feel free to post your own water textures here too!

EDIT: Dark and bright water variants, dark for landscape ponds, etc., bright for tap water.

EDIT: Turned the refraction down to 10% again, I believe that is the correct value for all cases. You should be able to use this texture for single-sided or double-sided cases. For ponds, etc. use just a single textured 3D polygon for the top surface.

This texture is NOT possible in 2012!!!!

[Dave Donley]

Hello Carl:

? 2012 should be the same as the 2011 example above.

[cad@sggsa]

Thanks

I only saw it afterwards, but it still applies

The texture cant be made as it was in 12.5, thus giving a total different look.

And the fact that textures change is just sad. There is so much I have to REDO due to the upgrade, costing me time and frustration.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

[Julia Langsman]

I'd love to see these water textures if they're still available anywhere?