Waterfall advice

[RSF]

Hello.

I need to create an animation of a large park composed of multiple lakes to show ducks (and other ornithological species) from around the world.
This lakes have small waterfalls and I would like some advice on how to create them.
It seams that using particles is useful only for spray type waterfalls.

I was thinking of a mix of animated noise deformers, some animated foam textures and eventually some sprayed particles in some points oh higher water impact.

I also never used phoenix FD but I'm afraid it would be overkilling render times and ram or I'm I wrong?

Are there any good animated water or foam textures on the market.

Any procedural way to create then?
I used simbiont a long time ago.

Could someone give me some advice on how to address this?

Thanks


PS:These are some examples of the type of waterfall I visualize:
http://grasshopperinc.com/images_cle..._houston_5.jpg
http://www.lancelandscape.com/Site/i...waterfall9.jpg
http://www.lancelandscape.com/Site/i...waterfall2.jpg

[muoto]

Hmm... what about going out there and film some waterfall movies, clean up the plates and put them as an animated material on a deformed mesh ?
Seems a good way to go for speedy animations.

[Morbid Angel]

what I can say is, really it depends on the quality you are after. If time is important and you need to get it done fast, I would just use particles, you can also try 2d element as muoto suggests. If you wish to try simulation it would offer a better result, more control, but takes much longer to get it right. I did not work with phoenix liquid part yet, but knowing realflow its a time consuming task. However if you manage to set something up, you can just create a couple of repeating elements and copy them around your scene, while rendering them you would get proper refraction/reflection of your scene and lighting.

[RSF]

Hi.

Filming a real waterfall to produce got quality animated texture maps would be great but it's not that simple I guess...

It would be great to have alpha animated textures of foam, spashes and other water effects but maybe it would be better to render them using a simulator like phoenix.
Even better would be to find a good commercial package

If it is possible to calculate something in phoenix that can be reused (instanced) seams a better solution for now...if render times are manageable
I'll investigate...

Thanks for the suggestions

[muoto]

i think it's not that difficult to "fake" with 2d plates. I guess it's what's done in post packages like Nuke very often ! but you can do the same directly in max by placing a few plates here and there.

[wxyz]

Particle Flow with motion blur replicated with Caching software.