Best Material For Water Render Over Background Image?

[tommygdawg]

Hey all,

I'm working on this project where I have to add CG water to a scene that was shot without any considerations for VFX in mind. This obviously makes my job very hard, but I think it's doable. Here's the question I have...

Here's the clean wide shot.


I'm using Phoenix FD to simulate my water. What would be the best V-Ray material settings to get me nice reflection/refraction over the water surface that will be standing about six inches off the ground? This is just a really quick test render.


As you can see, this isn't really ideal. What I'm looking for is something that's basically transparent but catches reflections on the ripples and still renders with an alpha matte that makes the transparent parts mostly...well, transparent. Any thoughts on how I can better achieve this?

[Deflaminis]

Since it's a muddy kind of dank water setup, a lower reflection than pure white may make sense. Also, an IOR of something near 1.33 (standard water I think).

Your reflections probably won't be 'correct' if you're just rendering over the backplate, since there is no environment above and to the sides. I would consider maybe making a 360 spherical camera in the original scene, rendering out an HDRI from it, and using it for proper reflections.

I'm sure other people have some better ways, but it's what I may try first.

[joconnell]

Try using the fog settings in the vray material or possibly the scatter volume material. Deflamis is right that you'd need to model a simple cylinder for your background plate, project your footage on to it so that your water plane can reflect and refract it properly.