I've been playing around with GhostShips materials to try to get a natural river/lake water. I'm fairly pleased with the results apart from the surface is still flat despite trying to add a displacement. Any help from the experts would be appreciated as I probably have changed parameters I shouldn't have.

Material is applied to the P11 box scaled to 15,000x15,000x300 %. Rendered with GPU Medium on a GTX 970

SF Nodes

Another scene

Modified SF nodes

I would combine (add) several wave textures at differing angles to make it look more irregular.

As for displacement, try massively subdividing the prop until your vertices are half an inch apart.

You should realize, however, that lake or river water in real life is rarely displaced by more than 1/4 inch. It's really not necessary to move it much.

Thanks for the Pointers BB. If I want displacement then I need vertices- I grabbed the box as I wanted depth to the water and didn't consider it was a low res prop. It looks about 18 inches across so it will take some subdividing.

The bit I'm not happy about is the dead straight line across the semi-submerged section (pic 3)- I'm sure it'll look better with a rippled edge. I would've guessed ripples were anything up to 2 inches. One for the sailors as to when a ripple becomes a swell, then becomes a wave.

I was leaving the question as to how to change the wave angle to another time as I can't see how to change it.

Thanks again BB

A thought popped in my head just before bed. Is SF displacement a CPU render feature only and not GPU?

I don't know the answer as I haven't got a GPU that I can use. You should be able to test that yourself in like 30 seconds.

The rippling water would wet the wood, leaving some wet wood above the water line. I think that bothers me more than the straight edge.

Displacement using gpu was added in the latest SR (Poser version 11.0.6.33735).

This render shows the construct floor being displaced and it was rendered using my GPU (GTX 980Ti).

The results of taking advice and a little searching. The P11 primitive box has been sub-divided to Level 5 to get a good mesh. Two wave textures have been multiplied together to get a more random wave texture (maybe more needed). Finally, the input to Displacement has to be multiplied to get the right level of displacement. Thanks to BB and GhostShip and Raven. Feel free to use and improve

Here's a way to rotate the wave pattern.

Pi radians (3.14159) is 180 degrees.

I never use transparency for water. I use refraction. This way the curved surface distorts the view of what is beneath the surface.

Transparency (wrong)

Refraction (right)

Now I applaud your investigation into the wave texture, but (without meaning to burst your bubble) getting rid of the look of repetition is a lot of work.

Try a simple clouds node, instead.

BB, I know how little I know about Poser- I stand on the shoulders of giants. I have been waiting for someone to tell me I'm re-inventing the wheel and post a link to a better material. I have gone back and de-cluttered the nodes to take into account of your advice. It took me a while to work out the water prop shouldn't cast a shadow. I'm still not happy with the absorption volume and I might try combining waves and clouds.

That looks much better.

Disabling shadows from the water plane is the usual solution. However there is also the "Tricky" Glass shader that works for when you can't turn off shadows, or you actually want shadows to behave a bit more realistically.

SuperFly Tricky Glass shader

In case that thread link ever goes dead at least here is the screen shot

There is a refinement where it's better to also apply transparency if Is Diffuse Ray is true, pointed out by nagra_00_

While you now have the Cycles "Glass" shader with gamma correction in a single node and don't have to assemble it from Reflect + Refract + Fresnel + Blender, you lose options that way. In order to get more realism, sometimes you'll want to mix Refract with Diffuse in patterns, and you still need the surface (Reflect + Fresnel) to do its thing regardless. This is why I keep them separate for the most part even though there are 1-node solutions for water.

So - Another thread you may find useful. The techniques in this thread are applicable to SuperFly. In theory you'd use the Absorption volume scatter for some of these effects but I find it difficult to control.

Refraction node question

This is looking great!!