procedural ripples from raindrops

[robin_lawrie]

I've got a nice tyflow rain setup, with splashes etc. but it's missing ripples in puddles. I've looked around but, as is usual these days, there is a lovely simple (realtime!) solution in blender:

https://youtu.be/wpFun04Cpv8?si=vo6LaTQcgpBYjeru

if you can get past the infuriating AI voice.


and absolutely nothing for max beyond ancient forum posts about long dead plugins with fake effects (not triggered by impacts etc)

seems like vray distancetex might be a starting point but beyond mapped gradient ramps (almost impossible to animate) It won't do animated ripples, especially ones that reflect nicely from surrounding geometry as per the blender tool.

someone care to surprise me with an elegant solution? even bump mapping would probably be fine.

[Vizioen]

https://thedizzyviper.gumroad.com/l/itKXZ

Edit: I don't know if it needs to be precise, but you could always cut out 1 or more of these ripples and use it to have precise ripples where the drops fall. Or use the ripple modifier to create a ripple on a plane/circle and use that maybe slightly below the surface to be triggered/spawned by tyflow. Not a tyflow user but should be possible I think?

[robin_lawrie]

ok I guess that could work. I was kinda hoping for something a bit more "real" (without a full fluid SIM obviously) I guess I'm just blender jealous

[Vizioen]

Yeah once in a while there's these cool videos. But Blender is anything but practical and painfully slow. Everytime I need to do something in Blender it's a pain. I wonder also how performant this is on a bigger plane (don't know if you need a bigger plane).

You can always ask over at the stack (3dsmax) or tyflow group on Facebook, there's a lot of knowledgeable people there, who might come up with a 3dsMax equivalent.

[Vizioen]

Actually I'm thinking of something but you could use maybe spacewarp ripple, not sure how tyflow handles this though and how many ripples you would need. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riAEFSWi0SQ