CGTalk - Help with water reflections

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Animare

06-19-2003, 03:01 AM

Hi,

I am trying to get a nice reflective water surface, however the result I'm getting at the moment is that the water is not distorting the reflection, it seems as though waves are just going over an image...how do i actually distort the reflection.

I tried to pull apart a water scene that came with max, but it has the same effect. What am i doing wrong?

At the moment i just have some noise animated on a plane, and an animated noise bump map to simulate the waves.

I just have a raytraced map in the reflect map slot.

Here is my result 112k, Div x.
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/shanj/water.avi

Oikman

06-19-2003, 03:38 AM

it worked for me when i took a plane example : LWH = 100x100x1
i had a surface below it that it reflects
i made a raytrace material

RGB 30, 165, 242 for the diffuse
RGB 4, 0, 62 for the reflect

Then in the reflect map i just used the default "Smoke"
and in then in the Transparentcy i used "Noise" map with the default options

I hope that helps

Oikman

BTW: Do you know anything about the Select and Move Gizmo? and how to get it back?

thanks

Animare

06-19-2003, 04:34 AM

Thanks i'll give that a shot.

Try pressing X

Libor

06-19-2003, 09:19 AM

Man I saw your anim and must say pretty silly problem (sorry I must say it:eek: )

How can reflections move when your water plane is totaly transparent!! The only water you see is on the background plate, do you expect it will start moving:rolleyes: ??

Conclusion is to set up a Raytrace material without an opacity (or Falloff mapped opacity) and in Reflection channel set color different from black (or value greater than zero). There are many other settings but this two are OK for desired reflections.

Also dont forget to set up some enviroment map if your scene is empty (only water plane object) so there is something to be reflected...

Hope this helped i bit:beer:

Alex Morris

06-19-2003, 11:14 AM

You can also use the flat plane reflection material which will automatically use the noise in the bump slot to distort the reflection if you tick the right checkbox on the panel. This is much quicker than raytrace to render but only works if you dont need major waves etc. and are not using a displacement map.

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