Ocean Shader Reflectivity?

[Duncan]

To make waves move in one direction make the turbulence graph zero and set the windDirection and waveDirSpread. Note, however, that only the turbulent waves can be peaking. You might find the observer speed useful. It moves the waves such that it as if the observer moves along the primary wave direction( adjusting the wind direction will change this primary direction). You might make a small bit at the right side of the waveHeight zero to avoid the primary( largest ) waves when using the observer speed. Also you might want to lower the waveSpeed a bit.

Here is an old post from me on the topic of ocean reflections....

There are several things that conspire to hide raytrace reflections on the default ocean setup. Make the environment ramp on the ocean all black.. it adds to object reflections, which instead should be backlight against the reflected sky.

Make the specular color white and the specularity 1.0.
If you need more reflectivity increase the refractive indexalthough keep in mind that this makes the ocean more like mercury, rather than water. Water is actually not very reflective at direct view angles. Grazing angles are much more reflective due to the fresnel effect. The rolloff in reflectivity from this effect is controlled by the refractive index. High refractive index materials, like metals, are nearly totally reflective at all incident angles.

Also note that the shadowed bottom of of objects tends to be black. If the scene behind it is also dark you may not see it.

You may also wish to make the water color darker, so that it does not wash out the reflection. For the strongest reflections you need to have the water color come mostly from the reflected background, not the shader.

If by clouds you mean fluids or fog nodes, you simply need to enable the visible in reflections attribute on these nodes. This attribute is on by default for normal geometry, but off on these nodes because they are more computation intensive.

Moving water reflects things just as much as calm, but the shapes get broken up so it is harder to see. The reflections are more evident for objects nearer the surface.

Duncan

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