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?
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.
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.
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…
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.
