Hi,
I'm new to Vue and using version 3. I'm rendering a still and my water looks flat and no different than my sky. How do I get the ripple/choppy effect?

Thanks!

The reason your water looks flat is that the water plane is a flat plane. You can try playing with different textures to see if you can give the illusion of ripples, or use a terrain. I don't have Vue 3 so not certain what you can do in the terrain editor, but if you can get some wavy lines , you should be able to stretch out your terrain in the main windows.

Vue 3's terrain editor should be able to do it just fine, the only difference between Vue 4 and Vue 3 in the terrain editor is no symmetrical terrains and no 3d view of the terrain, just a top down view for Vue 3. I would try as Djeser suggested and try different water materials or try experimenting with creating a wavy terrain and then applying a water material to it.

Are you by any chance using Vue D'esprit 3 Limited Edition? I have noticed that Vue3LE produces flat water unlike other versions .. importing the same scene into Vue D'esprit 4 will produce normal water again .. I have yet to find out if the unlocked version of Vue3LE removes this limitation or whether Vue3LE users are stuck with flat textures until they get a full upgrade .. still waiting for the magic key to arrive ..

And we now have an answer for the unlocked version too .. Water is still a flat surface .. as are the trees trunks when rendered .. the full version of Vue3 and even the Demo version does not have this limitation and renders ripples on water .. so for Vue3LE (full or limited) the renderer appears to have been downgraded. There is one more thing I need to test before uninstalling but for the moment it's not looking promissing ..

Well that stinks, I'll have to wait until that version comes out in the states to try it but that's a little disapointing to hear that they downgraded it. I guess I have to wonder then if it might be better to use the free Version of Vue 2 that came out a while ago on one of those cd's if some of the features of Vue 3 aren't even working.

Hold on .. I said there was one last thing I needed to try ..

When you get the serial key to unlock Vue3LE you also gain access to the software updates .. now I had tried the lastest upgrade but it didn't do the trick .. but you can get it to work using multiple upgrades ..

Upgrades and sequence required to fully unlock Vue3LE once you have the key -

1. Vue3Update301.zip (overwrite all existing files)

2. Vue3Update302.zip (again overwrite all existing files)

3. Vue3.1Upgrade.zip (apply patch as normal)

Still doesn't help those with the locked version but atleast those that decided to buy a key can get some sensible use out of it ..

So there you go .. happy rendering =o)

Message edited on: 08/11/2004 13:44