I am working on a pool, and I got my water looking great, but everything under the water is flat. I know water bends light, but why flat? My steps going down are flattened, and I am getting no depth. What should I be looking at?
A visual reference can help. Not sure what you mean by flat. How are you creating the water, just a regular bump? Displace modifier? VrayDisplacement?
Yeah, I thought about a reference after I posted. My animation is about done and I’ll share. The water is pretty basic, with all of the correct variables. The pool looks like a wading pool that is only a few inches deep, when it is 2-6’ deep. Stay tuned
You mean no caustics, right? I have the same problem. I keep going back and forth between trying to get caustics right and using a vray plane light to fake generate it. Haven’t touched it for a while but I can send it to you (the plane light with the texture).
That would be wondeful!
Here is what I got. In the back, when I fly over the water, it looks like there is 1’" of water.
It’s just refraction doing what it does. It looks fine to me. You’re probably overthinking it 
What was killing me initially is that I didn’t realise directional had to be almost 1.0 for the texture to show, which makes sense, I know. Try it and let me know if it works.
just lower Refraction IOR closer to 1.0
This is the default water shader that comes with the VrayMTL (IOR 1.33) with some added fog and a bercon noise in the bump. The pool is 200 cm deep. Using quick caustics ( for quick caustics you need to have your water plane subdivided enough for it to work). Max 2027 scene attached.
Pool.zip (87.9 KB)
These quick caustics are f-ing awesome, really helps sell the water without huge computations.
Crayox13 - thank you. Very kind and always helpful as usual.
I am stuck on MAX 2024 - can save it down?
Very strange. I create a simple box, inset and detach the top as the water. Subdivide it, add noise, make the water, turn on easy caustics, and it looks great. I bring the same technique into my pool scene, and I get a solid blue plane.
Normal of the water plane in the wrong direction?