pontoons

[mcvltd]

Hehehe... you the man! Looks really good!!

Funnily enough, that's the exact sinking feeling I'm getting at the moment....

<presses alt+tab> oh,so that's what that does!

[mcvltd]

Well, had a quick play with the refraction falloff and it seemed to work well - used as a world zdepth falloff, but, ran into problems when trying to get shadows from the objects floating on the water to cast onto the vray plane below (acting as the sea bed). As soon as I turn on 'receive shadows' for the vray plane, the water looses it's refraction! The only objects that are casting shadows are the boats and pontoons. Anyone know whats going on here? Olitech - I notice you have shadows in your scene - did you do anything special to get these?

btw - vray sky in the environment fog map works a treat, thanks!

[Neilg]

Your camera is just too low and your water too reflective, there is refraction its just harder to see. And do you have 'affect shadows' turned on for your water?

[olitech]

hmmm..nothing special in my water...

like cubiclegangster said, just make sure you have 'affect shadows' ticked on your water material.

'receive shadows' def needs to be on in your floor material.

i'm getting shadows on the water surface -and- in the ocean floor. my camera is also at a higher angle...

only other thing is making sure the shadow bias of your sun is at .01 if you're using meters/meters....?

[mcvltd]

I'm pretty sure affect shadows is turned on, not too sure about the bias - will take look, and the reflection definately does take away some of the visability of the refraction. I was just stunned by the difference between turning the receive shadows on/off. Will have a crawl through the scene in more detail tonight.

Thanks guys!

[mcvltd]

Problem was down to the water surface not casting shadows! Will do another render soon...

[mcvltd]

weeeeee... here we go, yet another render - finally got that water sorted (thanks olitech!), will look at vray dirt next.

just feel the tropicalness.....

[tct70]

just feel the tropicalness.....

Feel like I should be drinking my coffee from a coconut with a long straw this morning!

Nice work!

[Joost Ink]

yes, very nice mcvltd!
the clouds are nice, how did you do them, ere they 3D?
However if you want the tropic look, clouds are a no go, of course, go for a more deep blue sky.
The water looks great, would you mind to share that?

[mcvltd]

tct70 - hehehe... thanks!

Joost Ink - Thanks also! Good point about the clouds, maybe I'll leave'em out for the next render. I just added them in quickly in post - I've got several high-res maps from HDR Mill and ploped them in - I should really try mix mapping them in with the vray sky.

The water material is basically -

darkish teal diffuse colour
strong fresnel reflections with a slight falloff towards the camera
strong refraction with a falloff set to perp/parallel and an adjustment curve to control it
refraction glossiness set to a falloff with world z depth
refraction ior of 1.3
affect shadows ticked
a bright teal colour for the fog
you'll have to play with the fog mult to suit your scene
go crazy with mix mapping loads of noise for the bump

[Joost Ink]

cool, thanks.

[olitech]

LOL, nice tropicalness...!

No joke, but i just came back from a Bahamas cruise yesterday!

And...unfortunately for me, there were tons of clouds...crazy cumulus ones. Then it started to rain..waaaaaaaaahhhh!

[mcvltd]

rotten luck!.... ...I was hoping for some nice holiday snaps to use as reference pics!

[mcvltd]

Had a go with vray dirt but didn't like the results... I like clean yachts!...but did have a play with caustics and OMG what a difference that makes to the water!

The only problem I've got now is that I want to try and fade off the caustics so they don't just end sharply at the specified radius - a bit like the falloff on standard lights, but just specifically for the photons - is this possible with vray sun? Or will I have to create another light that is just for the caustics?

[mcvltd]

This one shows the sharp caustic cutoff line in the water a lot better...