Hi all,

Using Vue 5 Infinite.

I'm currently trying to do a scene which involves a still pond with various objects causing (mostly gentle) ripples.

I'm using the Noise->Math->Wavelet node to generate ripples emanating from the objects.

I've set up a wavelet node for each object (with origin suitably altered to coincide with the object - that took some time!) and summed the results together. That works OK and I get nice overlapping ripples, but...

I want some of the objects to cause larger (i.e. greater amplitude/vertical scale) ripples than the others. I can find no way of altering the amplitude of the wavelet node apart from adding two of them together (and even then I'm not sure if I'm achieving what I want).

So I'd be very grateful for any ideas:-)
(Even if that involves a different approach altogether.)

Cheers,
Diolma

(If you don't understand what I'm trying to do that's my fault for not explaining it properly.)

A "Math Node" | Multiply node should do the trick, but what your feeding the result into and other settings may be important to getting the right result.

Hi, nruddock, thanks for quick reply:-)

Ooops - I forgot to say that I'm feeding the result of the wavelet node into Bump on a plane (not infinite). The plane has (slightly blurred) transparency (of about 90%) and refraction index of (approx) 1.3. (Although I'm never sure if that works properly on planes - maybe I should replace the plane by a cube/box?)

The Bump Production has a "depth" of 0.2, which seems to work about right for the "normal" ripples.

I will certainly try Math->Multiply.

What I don't know (among a lot of other things) is what the range of the output of the Wavelet node is to start with, so I'm stabbing in the dark and that's time-consuming:-)

At the moment I have the (all) Wavelet nodes set to the same settings, with scale = 1 and wavelength = 1.5 for x/y/z. These settings were arrived at by trial and error (error = trial - 1) :-)
(Although two of these wavelet nodes are identical in all respects, but that may change if the multiply option works..)

Hope that helps your understanding of what I'm trying to do, it'd be rather difficult to put together screen-shots..

Cheers,
Diolma

If your feeding the Bump output, you may possibly not see any effect for either of the follwoing reasons :-

1. The range required by the output is always -1 to 1 and may be clipped internally.
2. As bumps only generate the appearence of the surface being moved, you may just not see the the effect your expecting if it's too strong.

One thing you could try is to use a terrain and control the height (the only way of getting real displacement in V5I).
There was a script called (something like) "Box of Rain" which might help with this.

Using the "Function Node Preview" window will help you to see what's going on at each stage in a series of nodes.

"1) The range required by the output is always -1 to 1 and may be clipped internally."
Yup, I guessed that. What I don't know is if the Wavelet output is clipped. But I've worked out a way to find out, by plugging the output into a colour map (equally divided between different colours), then seeing which colours get expressed.

"2) As bumps only generate the appearance of the surface being moved, you may just not see the the effect your expecting if it's too strong."
As the camera angle is fairly low I can see the effect 'cos of the reflections, since I have a darkish landscape and a bright blue sky.

Using a terrain is not an option. The wavelets have to be too precisely placed (with the centre of each in the middle of each object causing a ripple) for me to be able to do that with a terrain.
Using the plane and the colour-map method explained above, I was able to carefully move each wavelet into place by fine-tuning their origins using the top view.

Oh, and I almost always have function preview turned on :-)

Thanks for your advice, tho' - very helpful as always.

Cheers,
Diolma