Water has always seemed to cause me problems even in Poser 5 and I've heard others say it is a hart material to make.

So I'm after suggestions, tips whatever on how to approach making a credible water shader to use on my latest project.

The Stargate "Puddle" is a real challenge, I've even tracked down the instructions from the original creator and they are below - but all seem double dutch to me.

Can anyone translate please and look forward to your suggestions

***"Originally I would do the puddles in Alias Power Animator, I have done some in Maya (early versions), I have heard that they were occasionally attempted in Lightwave. I may be going senile, but I think I did the ones in the pilot in Softimage (pre XSI).

When I rebuilt them from Alias PA to Maya I remember being very keen to keep render times to a minimum. Thus raytracing was avoided as it was used previously.

The ripples that people create as they walk through them are all hand placed and timed, and you can't really see the true effects of that till it's rendered, so quick turn arounds meant more accurate ripple line ups. Also a certain amount of flexibility is required as the desired look can change a lot depending on what environment the puddle is in. I remember much talk of the 'flecks of light' around the bright center, and how different people liked to see them different ways.

My basic memory of it was a Nurbs Circle set to a planar trimed surface. The shader was a blinn (good control of specular and reflection). The reflectivity had a ramp with a facing ratio sampler info attached for a fresnel effect. the color was a dark blue circular ramp. The specular was tight and bright. The bump was the water shader (not the new fancy ocean shader) with another water shader in the color gain to give a good variety of wave sizes. The majority of the look came from a reflection map. Don't forget to connect the outnormal of the bump to the normal camera of the envirnment sphere of the reflection. The environment sphere used a circular ramp with whit in the center and dark blue on the edge, this was color gained with a number of fractals (but youd be surprised how much of the 'light flecks' come from the distortion of the bump map and not the fractals) to get the 'flecks' just right. When this ramp was reflected and distorted by the bump map all was good. To control the placement of the bright spot (which would change the angle the puddle was viewed from, the environment spere placement node was rotated to that the bright spot of the reflection ramp was always nearly behind camera. The ripples for the pass through is the water shader (maped to the color gain of the bump) with the waves turned off and the ripples turned on, ripple time is animated and the projection node is used to place it. Then it goes in Flame/Inferno for glowing and rays and a hand painted reveal matte for the pass throughs.
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Put simply, they avoided raytracing, and used very customized shaders with reflection maps and fresnel ramps for the effect. Then rendered the scenes in render passes (not easily accomplished in Poser, and some types of passes are not possible) to add the final FX as video postwork (Flame and Inferno are high-end video fx compositing tools, which are often used to put together multiple render passes from 3d software, and add some incredible effects to them). Without using postwork in apps such as AfterEffects or Combustion, you could still get this effect in Poser, but you're looking at long render times which will involve raytracing. If you have a video FX editor, you can render this out in 'simple' passes (character as one pass, then the "water" as the other, and if you have P6, shadows can be your third pass), using animated nodes and reflection maps in P5/P6 (no raytracing), then add the ripple effects and pseudo-reflections in post. Ajax has a good water shader in his materials pack for P5 which can be tweaked.

Easy....just follow this tut and your all set http://www.renderosity.com/tut.ez?Form.ViewPages=916 with a good bump and lighting it should work great.

Thanks for the link to that tut - that is exactly what i was looking for - not really interested in the animation techniques for this project just a credible water plane for a static image....

hmm..I've done most of mine in Bryce..once used a water mat with a spotlight behind it, and it was the 2nd longest render I've ever done..;) you guys are way beyond me..;)

pakled, LOL, what good is it having Poser 6 if we don't try to push the envelope - gotta keep pushing it til it crashes :) Actually i have been playing with various settings all weekend , with no real joy and some of those renders have been looooong :)

This is about the best I've been able to manage, in P6. All procedural materials ... no maps.

I added a point light to the center of the ring to illuminate the surroundings. The brightness at the center of the event horizon is actually an ambient setting, and not caused by the point light.

Took about a minute to render. It'd look a bit better with some postwork to soften and diffuse the glow, but this is a direct render out of Poser.

Looking Good Little_Dragon, thats getting close to the effect that is seen in the T.V series. Would you agree it is not as easy as it sounds?

What about an animated displacement map to simulate the ripples (Assuming we are still concerned with animation). Those could be worked out in prep via using the material as the diffuse color and test renders done inside draft render mode. Once you are happy with the displacement, move it over to the correct node and get the basic material down using reflection or refraction... As you can tell, I'm just guessing here....I'm still pretty ignorant of the capabilities of P6, however, I think all of these things are doable in the current versions of poser. eric

Would you agree it is not as easy as it sounds?

Perfection never is.

(Assuming we are still concerned with animation)

I was playing around with the Gather and Wave nodes, earlier, trying to create procedural ripples that would be generated automatically by anything touching the event horizon, but unfortunately I never mastered calculus.

"I was playing around with the Gather and Wave nodes, earlier, trying to create procedural ripples that would be generated automatically by anything touching the event horizon, but unfortunately I never mastered calculus." Now that what I call pushing the envelope, just left me sitting well behind. WOW!!! When are we going to attempt our first major motion picture in Poser 6 ????? :)