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Pete Draper’s Calm Sea Now here is some nice
water. It has ray trace reflections, so rendering can be slow.
There are a few things
to consider, as usual: modeling, materials, and lights. The materials and
models can also be animated via phase, etc. Model the water This is our plane ...
20,000 units! Very large to denote sense of scale.
Check this out. We need
to control where we are going to apply noise for the ripples of the water.
For that we need a soft selection
that is centered where our camera is going to be. Then, the ripples will
appear to fade at the horizon. Note the vertex and sphere settings. This is from the Top view. Also, see the high number – 12,000 -- on the soft selection.
You might need to scale
the gizmo
Set up the Noise gizmo like this, shown in Perspective
view:
Note – you can animate
this by increasing the phase with each frame [for example, from 0-200 over
the course of 200 frames.] To add complexity, add a
second noise modifier aimed perpendicular to the first. the
settings are just the same. Tip – you can right click
the word NOISE to copy and paste on the stack.
Arrange your perspective
view so it looks something like this. Ctrl C to make a camera from the view.
Make the skydome Now we need our trusty
sky dome. Here it is, Top view:
Scale her down to 60%
height [side or front viewport] ... flip normals as usual:
Add a cylindrical UVW
map modifier:
Material for skydome Our water will have
reflection as you would expect. Reflection materials are useless without
something nice to reflect. So, here is the map to apply to the skydome. Materials – first, the
sky. This is an image from the Draper CD. You can find a panoramic sky or
make one. The point is the dimension:
Self illumination is
100% ... tile 2.0 on U. There will
be one seam but that will not be a problem as long as we are not looking at
it.
Next -- our Sea material This is the screen shot
of the Material/Map Navigator for Sea:
Starting at the top level
Sea (Standard) ... note the
specular and glossy settings ... the diffuse color is a
dark gray: the specular color is pure white.
We have a Bump and a
Reflection slot, wet to 20 and 75.
The reflection slot: Simple! IOR is 0.6. In
the Side is a default Raytrace.
The bump slot Without the
bump we only see the wave forms
from the mesh:
With the
bump we have much more detail in
water movement:
The details of the bump
slot ...
We have a Mask map with Smoke
for the bump map and a Gradient ramp for the bump mask Let’s remember where we
are in the map navigator. You can see, the smoke is for the ripples, and the
[radial] gradient mask will serve to smooth out the ripples at the horizon
edges.
The Bump map The Smoke Coordinates are set to Explicit Map channel ... note the
small numbers for size, etc.
Animation note on this smoke – over 200 frames, the phase can be animated from 0 to 10.
Optional mask for the bump The next map is the mask
for the bump, a radial Gradient Ramp.
What this will do is, make our sea appear to fade the ripples off into the distance.
If you are doing an aerial shot, I would not bother with it.
Explicit map channel, radial:
Lights Set an omni light with
multiplier of .5 to 1.0 for the sun, to cast some reflection on the water. It
is important to take the time to place the lights and make test renders to
get the best play of reflections. Top and camera views of
light:
Add a skylight ... the color is sampled
from the sky ...
Camera and render Set up a camera from the
perspective view ... make it 28 mm to increase the sense of scale ...
Here is a render set up
for 70 mm. Note how the ripples fade out near the horizon. This is because of
your mask on the bump.
An aerial view:
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