Hi All I am interested in making convincing underwater above water images in Poser all the realy good ones that I have seen are made in Vue or Bryce. Am I wasting my time pursuing Poser for my images and should I spend the time learning Vue Regards Keith

If you have poser 5 water should be possible using that.

I wouldn't say that you were "wasting your time" with Poser. I've seen some good underwater work done directly in Poser.

But I don't view this as an either/or decision. Both programs have advantages and strenghs. Just in different areas. In my experience, the two applications compliment each other very, very well.

Learning Vue is always a good idea.

Vue gives you the ability to easily do underwater scenes or atmospheric scenes.

I've seen it done in Bryce(there's a tut out there for it..somewhere), don't know if that's a help. As for underwater scenes in general, check with Anthony Appleyard, who is an expert by now..(and has a goodly section of underwater gear, etc..;)
Possibly (I'm making this up as a mental experiment), if there's a way to make gels, you could suspend lights up high, put a wavy sort of gel there, transparent or translucent, and have the light shine through that. Take out the 'warm' colors, or dampen them (depending on depth), and maybe if there's a way to introduce 'fuzziness' (in Bryce, it would be fog or haze..I'm not good enough in Poser to know if there's an analogous setting), and that'd be a start..more coherent answers to follow this one..;)

Message edited on: 02/08/2005 16:27

I made a fog prop, made of many single faces set parallel. It is in the freestuff. If it is set to 99% transparency and cyan color (red=0, blue=green=255), it would produce the effect of low underwater visibility (but will make the render time longer). That is in Poser: Bryce can make fog effects directly.

Ajax has some water textures in Free Stuff. It is in his P5 Shader Pack. He also has some tips on this forum. Search both for Ajax.

You can do something similar to gels using poser 5.

You need some way of faking caustic lighting. It may be possible to do this with cunning application of textures, e.g. actually painting the caustic lighting effect onto the seabed. Really, you would be better taking up Vue or Bryce though. Why not use the right tools for the job?

I have scuba dived many times, and I have rarely seen caustics underwater.

At runtimeDNA, there are water lights in the poser 5 freebies... They work great for underwater scene.

There are illumination effects and filters in PSP and PS. Not everything has to be done in 3D .. sometimes postwork is the best option.