How does the water texture work?

[t.petrov]

You can try to set the height multiplier to 0.01, choppy multiplier to 0.00007 and patch size to 2560.
Also it seems that you have to delete the inner edge of you water plane.

In seems that Maya 2011 has a bug: setting small values in the Attribute editor doesn't work. If you set an attribute to 0.0001, the command that is executed is setAttr attr 0, not setAttr attr 0.0001. You can use the channel box or the Window > General Editors > Attribute Spread Sheet.

[pechart]

Hmm, okay. I'll give that a try.

[vlado]

In seems that Maya 2011 has a bug: setting small values in the Attribute editor doesn't work. If you set an attribute to 0.0001, the command that is executed is setAttr attr 0, not setAttr attr 0.0001. You can use the channel box or the Window > General Editors > Attribute Spread Sheet.

It's not a bug; you can specify the precision somewhere. Can't remember exactly the case, but there was either a global setting (like in 3ds Max), or it had to be specified when creating the parameter in the C++ code.

Best regards,
Vlado

[snivlem]

It's not a bug; you can specify the precision somewhere. Can't remember exactly the case, but there was either a global setting (like in 3ds Max), or it had to be specified when creating the parameter in the C++ code.

Best regards,
Vlado

Channel Box > Edit > Settings > Change Precision?

[aweidenhammer]

what is the proper control to scale up or down the frequency, so that I can control the water scale in relation to my scene?

[t.petrov]

Hi,

There is Height Multiplier, which scales the amplitude of the waves.

[aweidenhammer]

I'm hoping for frequency, not amplitude. Easy enough to make the waved higher, I need to scale the width to fit a smaller scene.

[t.petrov]

You can play with the patch size parameter. In my tests if I lower this parameter I get smoother water surface.

p.s. keep in mind that the VRayWater texture simulates ocean water, so if you try to render something calmer like lake it will be hard or even impossible.

[aweidenhammer]

does my scene have to be real-world scale to make the waves sizes fit? Given I'm working on a huge airial shot, vray is giving me scene scale errors.

[vlado]

It is a warning, not really an error; in most cases things will be fine.

Best regards,
Vlado

[aweidenhammer]

It definitely wasn't fine Can you give us some idea of what the major controls of the waterTex are? Is patch size a sort of global scale?

[vlado]

I have to check, but I think it was related to the water patch size in UV space.

Best regards,
Vlado

[timdog]

Did anyone manage to create anything more dramatic with this texture?
In my tests it was really hard to achieve anything crisp and "watery detailed".
Everything I did looked too repetetive or too smooth.

[waaazoo]

I did this, some time ago. It's not really dramatic, and I don't even really remember what I did. I will have to look at this again...

regards,

[timdog]

Hi wazoo , thanks for sharing.
In the 2nd picture, did you displace a plane with a sinewave deformer ?

I still think It might be good for some occasions but I cant really see anybody use it to build up something that even comes close to Maya´s native Ocean.
But then again I didnt do a through research..and have some questions about it:

Is it possible to combine several textures and how do you do it with vector displacement?
What does the resolution parameter really do? Is the water always limited to a maximum of 2048x2048 unless you wanna repeat the texture?

Another thing thats really important imho is a preview deformer for interaction, foam generation, general camera animation and whatnot..