No - not mine, but an effect I would like to achieve...

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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The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
Robert A. Heinlein

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