animating water - any tips?

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Just playing around with animating some gently rippling water. Not waves as such, but the kind of gentle movements you would find on a small pond.

Still image renders look fine using a falloff in the reflection slot and 3 different levels of animated noise in the bump channels, one of which is a mask noise so that the level of waves undulates over the surface of the water.

So what are the best settings for animating this using Vray? The usual animation rules (increm add every nth frame), then render using the saved solution? The thing is, there really is very very little movement in the geometry - its very subtle indeed. Should I be using a new solution for every single frame to ensure there is no flickering?

Anyway, I'm playing around with a few settings, but if anyone has done anything like this, tips/pointers would be nice.

Thanks

[samuel_bubat]

hi,

i got perfect results with reactor water.
Especially if you want smaller waves.
give it a try

sam

[blinkimage]

I've not even touched Reactor yet - very scared! Did you use the Max6 reactor?

[samuel_bubat]

i used reactor in max 5 and 6.
in max 5 it can be a bit confusing

a short tutorial (max 5 but should work with 6, too) for your purpose.

create a reactor water spacewarp.
create a reactor RBCollection Helper.
create a sphere above the water spacewarp
In the RBCollection rollout add the sphere to the collection.
open reactor in the utilities panel.
there you will find a rollout "properties"
select the sphere and set the mass parameter in the
reactor rollout to some value.
scroll up and search the "preview in window" button (think it´s called like this.. don´t have a max atm)
hit it =) and a cool preview window will apear.... hit the start button
an see what happens.
you will probabely have to tweak some parameters from the
water spacewarp and maybe change the mass of the sphere a bit
to get satisfying results.
After that, to get your sim into max.. scroll up again and search
the export button...
there you can export the sim to your viewports.
due to the water is just a spacewarp, you have bind it to some object.
Plane or box .
To adjust the height of the waves, select the plane (or whatever you assigned to the water) and in the spacewarp binding (modifier tab)..
you can find a parameter for that purpose (strength or similar).
Enjoy

i rendered some tests with caustics.. in the past
I will post it here when i´m back at work

cheers