exterior WIP

[WWX]

Hi, I have made some progress since posting this job a week or two ago.

I still don't know what I am missing with regards texture + MAX + VRay. I have used some decent textures, but they keep looking fussy. In fact the picture as a whole does not look to sharp and I did use settings on the high end or at least I think so

The pool/water is the other area I am focusing on. I generated a caustic map with Caustic Generator and placed it in the Bump map slot, but it looks horrible. Instead of creating nice caustic patterns it looks more like lines ontop of the water surface.

Would appreciate all help, just let me know what I need to upload.

Thanks


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[DaForce]

check your PM man

[Clifton Santiago]

Da_elf has a pool tutorial here:

http://elfpro3d.com/Tutorials/Swimming/swimming.html

[DaForce]

Here is a simple scene.. nothing special.

But shows what i was talking to you about via PM.

Yeah caustics on floor are too strong.. but cant be bothered fixing (its late)... just wanted to show it can easily be done
DOWNLOAD HERE

[mcvltd]

Hey thanks DaForce, thats a really good tut. Much appreciated!

[DaForce]

No problem

[WWX]

DaForce, I thought you would be sleeping by now

Thanks for the tut/file it help me a great deal. If you don't mind I would like to ask another question.

In your example the caustic pattern so solely created by the distortion of the plane via the noise modifier and although it looks great in real life this effect it also displayed in water bodies with virtually flat surfaces. In this method we loose the caustic effect with the surface goes to flat. Is there an alternative option for more water bodies with flatter surfaces?

Thanks for the time.

[pentool]

That's a nice pool, DaForce! I'm gonna try it once I get home...

[visualride]

Nice one DaForce. I've already rendered out a nice animation test over lunch. Thanks.

WWX- Couldn't you just make the water with tall noise invisible to the camera and subtle noise water visible? Otherwise, you've got me. I don't get a chance to use caustics very often.

[DaForce]

WWX:
Glad it helped
Well there "has" to be some sort of disturbance in the water surface otherwise you just wont get that patterning. If the water surface was totally flat you would just get an even light caseinto the water..
Basically almost all water bodies in the real world have some sort of disturbance.
The caustics are produced by the disturbances in the water, as the angles of the water surface change it changes how the light passes thru the water and concentrates it in varies places, thus giving you the caustics effect. If the water was completely flat the light rays would not get affect and just cast an even light on the bottom of the pool. (just like a mirror)

Think about it.. how often have you seen still water which is then hit with a drop of rain or something and THEN you can see the caustics caused by the ripples.

pentool:
hehe glad you liked it

visualride:
Do show the animation!!

[WWX]

Hi Daforce,

I think you actually highlighted what I was trying to say much better with the sample of the rain drop.

I agree that we rather seldom find pure flat surfaced water bodies, but the pronounced caustic effect created by just that one drop and the relative flat water surface was what I was trying to get to.

I might be totally wrong, but I think if a plane is created in MAX resembling that amount of disturbance we’re not going to get caustics when rendering.

The reason why this is an issue for me in this scene is because the water in this pool design actually spills over the edge into a drainage system. So if I disturbed the water to enough in order to generate the caustic pattern it does not look right along the edges.

I will give the suggestion by visualride a go.

[DaForce]

Well thats the thing.. you would need to make the disturbance your self either by modelling by hand or using noise and wave modifiers on selective pieces of mesh under subobject mode.. or even use the help of a simulation software.

The point being that to get the ultimate look you need to have lots of little variation in the mesh so the middle of the water would have bigger more shallow disturbance and the closer it gets to the edge the smaller and tighter the disturbances get.

However if you just want a quick way around the whole problem, you can do something similar to what visualride said, but if its just a single render.. you can render with the noisy plane to make the caustics and save the resulting caustics solution then delete or hide that noisy plane, and return your almost flat water plane and then use the saved caustics. This will produce i think exactly what you want.

[WWX]

there are so many options, I like it thanks

[DaForce]

Here is a simple test... with a plane and 4 ripple modifiers..

Now notice how strong the caustics affect is underwater... that was with the ripple modifiers on very smaller.. only 1 - 2mm variation.. (but i think its more for my scene as its not to scale) but even still very small.
And it made nice strong caustics.
This image shows just the caustics solution.. i have hidden the water.

[WWX]

simply amazing