Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: Looking for sand displacement/bump map

DrMCClark opened this issue on Mar 30, 2006 · 79 posts


DrMCClark posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 5:33 PM

I'm trying (still ;) to work on my beach scene and I'd liket o add a little texture to the sand plane. I figured a displacement and/or bump map would do the trick, but I can't find anything that looks right. I tried a few caustics, but as you can see, not what I want. Does anyone know of something that'd help? Thanks! Matt

maclean posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 5:40 PM

Have you tried a noise node? Also, remember that you can insert a Color_Math node between the displacement node and channel to set your zero displacement value to something other than black. Example - set the Color_math Value 2 to RGB 128/128/128 (medium gray), and anything lighter will displace outwards, anything darker will displace inwards. Plug your noise displacement into the Color_Math, then plug the C_M into the disp channel. Since a noise node gives very mixed tone values, the Color_math node can change it dramatically. mac


jonthecelt posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 5:44 PM

I'd suggest trying to work out something procedural, rather than using a texture map... it would stop the pixellation you get from magnification, and would be easier on the memory overheads when rendering... exactly which nodes you might want to use, though, I'll have to sit back and think for a while... jonthecelt


bagginsbill posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 7:08 PM

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1187424

If you like the look of my linked image, try the cellular node and the noise node. I think this was mode 3 cellular, with a teensy amount of noise added.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


DrMCClark posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 7:14 PM

Bagginsbill - that looks great! What noise settings did you have and how do I feed the cellular into it?


DrMCClark posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 7:22 PM

Bagginsbill - oh and where were you when I was asking how do that kind of water effect? Mind sharing your secret? ;)


PabloS posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 8:01 PM

Bagginsbill! Holy manure not only the sand but the foam!!! I bow to the god of procedural nodes and pray that a post, with screen shots, appears before me on how to do that and foam. Oh, and the water too. LOL

Message edited on: 03/30/2006 20:02


DrMCClark posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 8:35 PM

We're not worthy, Bagginsbill! :)


danamongden posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 8:57 PM

I'm also interested in the water settings, Bagginsbill. Please post them.


bagginsbill posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 9:21 PM

LOL - sorry I didn't answer - was busy watching TV. I'll post the material room settings for the water and sand tomorrow. But the short answer is I used a math node to add them together the cellular and noise together. Sometimes you feed one node to another, sometimes you just add'em up. DrMCClark - I remember seeing your question about the water effect a while back. That post got me thinking about it and led to the picture. But the search engine is such crap I couldn't find your post to tell you about it. But now we've found each other so all is good. PabloS, you crack me up. Cya in the morning.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


PabloS posted Thu, 30 March 2006 at 11:48 PM

sure bagginsbill. we know gods need R&R. :-)

Message edited on: 03/30/2006 23:49


Casette posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 1:22 AM

bagginsbill, you're my procedural Guru. Settings, please :)


CASETTE
=======
"Poser isn't a SOFTWARE... it's a RELIGION!"


ashley9803 posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 3:55 AM

This type of post only lets me know fow much further I need to go with poser and how little I know. I'm still using 2D texture maps, and playing around with transparency and specular settings, and the use of nodes and all their intracicies astounds me. Just how do you people learn so much about 3D programing? Do you do this for a living? I'm a teacher in Australia working from 6:30 to 3:30 and use Poser as a hobby for maybe 2-3 hours a day. Do I have any hope of mastering the techniques you are talking about? I've been using Poser 4&5 for the past 2 years but, reading this, now I'm feeling I don't really know much at all. I think I need some quick, clear Node work. Any tutorials?


ashley9803 posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 4:27 AM

oops, found just what I'm looking for posted by Acadia yesterday (or today in your time).


DrMCClark posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 5:57 AM

I've tried the cellular node and while I'm getting most of the effect (haven't added noise yet), I'm getting these damnable spots! I tried increasing the AO bias, which helps some, I'm already at 2.75 here. Any ideas on how else to get rid of them?

bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:26 AM

Ok I've got 8 pictures to show you.

Here's my basic scene setup in the preview. One sided square for water, MicroCosm Macro for sand, hi-res sphere for sky.

The MicroCosm Sky Dome didn't show up in reflections, so I use the sphere instead. Here I've shown the Transform for the Sky sphere.

The white oval is the sand, the gray square is the water. You can just make out the sky sphere as a lighter large oval over the whole scene. I make the bottom half of the sphere transparent, which make the preview ghosted like this. Until you set the material, it will show up opaque.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:28 AM

Here is my sky material. I've used the "N" (Normal) node to make the bottom half transparent. This is going to be important in getting the edge of the surf to show up using a little trick in how the refraction node works.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:31 AM

Here is the material for the sand. A small amount of noice is fed into the bump input. A large amount of displacement from cellular gives the little sand dunes effect. For coloring, I skip the built in diffuse. Instead use Clay to get more even lighting. The standard diffuse will make surfaces too sensitive to light angle for realism. The color of the sand is a blend of two tans driven by a noise node. Finally, the overall specular highlights are done with alt specular but I could have used the built in. I like to handle specular in a separate node because I often do special effects with multiple nodes on it. This one is simple, though. If you want more sparkly sand, raise the specular value and lower the roughness.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:44 AM

Ok now for the complicated one. This is the water and foam for the hi-res square.

In the upper right is the fBm and math function to generate the foam structure. This is passed through a math function only so I can easily turn it off without disconnecting it. I just set the math value to 0. The fBm produces white where I want foam. This is fed to the diffuse_value, so where there is no foam, the square produces no diffuse light.

To the left of the fBm is a math function which "inverts" the foam map. This becomes my clear water map. In other words, where the water is clear, this is white. Where the foam is, this is black. I feed this to the specular value, because I don't want specular reflections on the foam - just the water. I also feed this to the reflection and refraction values. Again, I only want those effects on the water, not the foam.

The reflect node is straightforward. You can adjust the value (.2) up or down to suit your taste. Don't make it too high or the water won't look real.

I've done a coupld tricks on the refract node. First, I set the softness to .5 - this makes the water a little murky. You can set it to 0 for crystal clear water. But surf always has some sand and bubbles in it and this takes care of it. Second, I set the RayBias to 1 inch. This means that any object within an inch of the surface will not be "seen" by the refraction. Or something like that. Anyway, it is this value that makes the edge of the water look white where it comes in close contact with the sand. I set the Refract background color to white and this makes the nice foamy edge on the water. Pretty cool, huh? Its actually a bug that I turned into a feature.

The v texture coordinate of the square drives the blender which chooses what color to tint the water. I used aqua and very light gray. Play with other colors here. Please realize, this is a trick and I have carefully contrived my scene to let this work. If the camera was seeing a curve around the water, it won't look right. I think of ways to deal with that, but for now, just make the sand-water interface roughly aligned with the X axis and all will be copacetic.

Finally, the Displacement is a combination of a Fractal_Sum and the Foam. You can try other functions instead of Fractal_Sum, like Turbulence, Waves, Spots, etc. Lots of different effects are possible.

To get good specular glints off the water, you need to either have some pretty violent displacement or, as I have done in my picture, put the sun back enough so it shines somewhat towards the camera.


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bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:47 AM

Here's a render with the camera pulled back to reveal the setup. I've intentionally messed up the edge foam. My sky dome here is not transparent, so the ray bias is picking up the brown bottom of the sky dome (because it skipped the sand). I made the ray bias 20 here instead of 1 to show you how you can easily see the edge effect from the ray bias. Ignore the gritty sand - I accidentally made the bump map too strong in this one.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:50 AM

Here I've made the sky dome bottom half transparent, and now my ray bias on the refract gives me the foamy edge. Of course it's too wide, but I just wanted to show it clearly. Notice the water is casting a shadow. You can choose to turn the shadow on or off. With the shadow on, it darkens the underwater sand nicely. But it isn't necessary. However, since I was doing murky water, this makes sense and produces a realistic effect.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:51 AM

Here's another angle - the foam looks good eh?

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:54 AM

Finally, a variation. Here are the changes I made: I turned off the water shadow - underwater is now lighter. I set the Refract softness to 0 - crystal clear water. I set the math function value in front of the fBM to 0 - so this turns off the foamy clouds. I changed the blender colors to a darker gray and I shifted the aqua to have more green in it.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 10:01 AM

On the issue of those spots in the sand. First of all, I don't bother with AO in a scene like this. There is only a tiny amount of IBL - most of the light should come from a single infinite light. So ambient shadows are largely irrelevent. Second, even with AO off, there is still a shadow bias problem with surfaces displaced by the cellular node. Try raising the shadow min bias on your infinite light (the one simulating the sun). Mine was set to 2. Below 1, I get the same artifacts as you did, even without AO.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


PabloS posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 10:05 AM

Oh bagginsbill who art in procedural node heaven .... Super stuff! I was thinking the water/foam node would also be useful for hot tub. bath tub scenes, etc. I'm not sure I understand how you control where the foam appears. Does it come into play when a surface below the water plane is within the RayBias?


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 10:06 AM

Ashley9803 - I wish I did this for a living. But I am a software engineer and messing with shader nodes is just like using a programming language, so figuring out how to do math and assemble pieces to do specific things is just like writing software. Which I am good at :) However, to do well, you also have to know what light is doing. I have studied physics (in high school I got a perfect score on the physics SAT) a lot, especially the physics of light. So if you really want to do well with tricky stuff, learn how light works. I don't mean physics, per se, though that helps. But understanding diffuse, specular, refraction, reflection, these are the basics. Then you have to get really familiar with all the shortcuts and approximations that Poser makes and learn to work around them when they mess up your scene. After that, drag and drop :-) Oh, and a HUGE, HUUUGE, amount of time spent experimenting.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 10:18 AM

PabloS - there are two different foam effects here. One is from the ray bias - this is making the foam at the water's edge where it touches the sand. I think it only happens when the underlying surface is at a very small angle to the water. The other foam is from the fBm node. In post 23, I turned that off, so you can see only raybias foam in that render. You don't have to use the fBm node. You could actually draw the foam and use an image mask instead. Hmmm, give me a minute and I'll demo that.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


PabloS posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 10:45 AM

oooo! Thanks!


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 12:56 PM

As usual this led to a lot of tinkering.

Making structured foam out of the same material turned out to be difficult to get the edges right.

So I made a second square, took out all the foam from the water, added the foam logic to the other square. The foam square I placed a teeny bit under the water square, with the foam sticking up through the water. I used an image to define the foam area and made the rest of the foam square transparent.

Will post the materials used next.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 12:58 PM

Here's the material for the foam square.

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 12:58 PM

Here's the simpler water to go with the "foam".

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


Indoda posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 2:09 PM

Thank you, O wise one, for sharing your knowledge so generously. I always enjoy reading and then playing with the ideas you show us.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
- Albert Einstein

Indoda


buckzero posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 3:06 PM

Excellent info, thanks.

$0


PabloS posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 3:30 PM

Whoa! Great! This will indeed be useful!

the end of my physics studies came abruptly after realizing that I could not get my brain "in that place." The prof started with "imagine you're looking out a window and someone tosses a ball outside the window in an arc. How long will you see the ball...?" Then went into a tedious explanation of vectors. And my brain was screaming, "why don't you just use a stopwatch!?!"

Anyway, thanks a bunch my friend for giving us the "stopwatch" and making things understandable for those of us that are unenlightened in the ways of physics.

oooo! Just thinking out load here. What if I drape a cloth over a character applying a varient of this node. Could I get the effect of the foam with a bit of water, washing over the character? Or perhaps the character texture itself using an image mask? Hmmmm....

Message edited on: 03/31/2006 15:31


Alisa posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 5:33 PM

bookmark

Cheers,
Alisa

RETIRED HiveWire 3D QAV Director


PabloS posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 6:19 PM

It's this way. I'm inept at visualizing or anticipating what will happen in the material room. Needless to say, my "experiment" in applying that node to a figure resulted in new levels of wrongness.

I only post this so that anyone waiting in eager anticipation of seeing my results can go about their day.

If bagginsbill is the procedural node god, then I am ... well not the anti-god, but more like a premordial amoeba.

Message edited on: 03/31/2006 18:34


blonderella posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 6:41 PM

priceless info!! bm

Say what you mean and mean what you say.


DrMCClark posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:15 PM

Bagginsbill - are you sure about 2.0 on the displacement? I set things up as you have them and got a pretty hectic render.

freyfaxi posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 9:43 PM

winces Ouch..that sure looks like a painful beach to sun-bake on ? :)


byAnton posted Fri, 31 March 2006 at 11:22 PM

Great Tut. Love this. That surf is incredible. Anton AKmaterialroombookmark

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."


Over 100,000 Downloads....


Casette posted Sat, 01 April 2006 at 1:58 AM

bagginsbill, can I make a temple for to adore you? (full of nude priestesses) :P THANKS !!! :D


CASETTE
=======
"Poser isn't a SOFTWARE... it's a RELIGION!"


Acadia posted Sat, 01 April 2006 at 3:16 AM

This looks like an excellent thread. I'm heading to bed but I'll look at it when I'm more awake.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi



mickmca posted Sat, 01 April 2006 at 7:16 AM

Wouldn't it be nice if someone at R'osity were collecting tutorial information like that and putting it, indexed, in a central location? I mean, all I have to do is bookmark it, but that's because thanks to wandering into another thread, I know about it.

Search engines on forums are generally crap. I spent more than an hour, a few weeks ago, tracking down a brilliant workshop thread on fur at RDNA. They have announced a "tutorial archive" that may make the search easier. But I'm not suggesting a "tutorial archive." I'm suggesting an archive of major informational threads, like this one. I will find a dozen uses for the knowledge gained from reading it.

M

Message edited on: 04/01/2006 07:30


bagginsbill posted Sat, 01 April 2006 at 8:06 AM

DrMcClark - I very carefully wrote in my first post a ke piece of info. Then renderosity ate my first posting and I had to type it all in again. (It always does this if you try to reply too long after having retrieved a thread.) I should know better, but I forgot to copy my text. So when I retyped it, I left something out. MY UNITS ARE INCHES If your units are not set to inches, and you use my displacement, bump, or other "size" related numbers, it will not work. I know its not the default, but when I'm visualizing what I want for new nodes, I think better in inches. For example, sand dunes 2 inches high or whatever. So go to Edit/General Preferences, find the tab with units on it, and choose Inches. After you've entered my materials, you can go back to feet or whatever - it won't change the mats. Instead the numbers will show up in the new units.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bagginsbill posted Sat, 01 April 2006 at 8:07 AM

I agree about a "great thread" repository. Acadia makes her own, and so do I.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


DrMCClark posted Sat, 01 April 2006 at 10:19 AM

Bagginsbill - Ah, yes. 2 inches is rather different than 2 feet ;) And yes, having a repository of superb tutorial threads like this is a fabulous idea.


crowbar posted Mon, 03 April 2006 at 9:08 AM

Bagginsbill

could you give some more detail on 2 things related to this please?

  1. shadows on water - what are the main nodes that we need to sort out - on most of my renders the shadow (say of a palm tree) treats the water as just another plane - I ve tried altering shadow bias settings to make the shadows more fuzzy but it still looks way off

2)if doing an animation of waves on a beach would you animate procedurally? or maths function maybe between 2 images if that were possible?

Message edited on: 04/03/2006 09:12


bagginsbill posted Mon, 03 April 2006 at 11:34 AM

Shadows on water are tricky. If the water is crystal clear, the only effect a shadow should have is on the specular reflections from the surface of the water, and the shadow on the bottom as seen THROUGH the water. Poser's specular light will automatically take shadows into account - specular reflection is directly from the light source (sun) to the surface, then to the camera.

As seen in my post #29, shadows from things above the water (like trees or foam) actually show up on the BOTTOM, not the water itself. If you turn off cast shadows for the water plane, then the only shadows on the bottom will be from other things.

A shadow falling on the water should have NO effect on the surface reflections. So this is why you should make sure that the base material has "Reflection_Light_Mult" and "Reflection_Kd_Mult" turned off. Otherwise, Poser multiplies how much to reflect by how much light is hitting that spot, which has nothing to do with reality.

Now if you want to model murky water, then we have a problem. Nothing in the model for water (reflect, refract, or specular) is going to properly render the effect of light and shadow on particles SUSPENDED in the water, between the surface and the bottom.

In the picture above, I tried another technique to address this. I placed 8 squares between the water surface and the bottom. On each of these, I connected a "random" node to a bias node (bias .1) and then that to the transparency inputs of the material. This creates random speckles that interact with light. But most of these squares is transparent. I layered this more or less evenly between the surface and the bottom. The color on them was just ordinary diffuse greenish brown. The result is that each of these catches some of the light or shadow, and lets the rest through to the next layer. As a result, the bottom is indistinct and the shadow from the tree fades nicely as the light finds it harder and harder to reach the bottom.

I think this is pretty realistic.


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


PabloS posted Mon, 03 April 2006 at 11:47 AM

if you're not a god, then may I suggest "procedural node savant"? That's just amazing


bagginsbill posted Mon, 03 April 2006 at 12:00 PM

I don't even try animation, so I can't say from experience what would work best. Based on how many cheats and approximations I'm making, I'd guess that animation wouldn't work too well. For example, getting the surf to flow, spread, and generally act real seems pretty hard to me. I could imagine using the "wave" node to get real wavy motions to propogate, but it would be a lot of work to get them to flow properly. PabloS - stop making my head swell. :)


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


bopperthijs posted Wed, 05 April 2006 at 4:02 PM

I tried out your tutorial, but nothing seemed to work, until I realised that you were using inches in your preferences where I was using millimeters. :blushing: But I think that happens all the times, Eurospace lost a 150 million marslander by that mistake. Great tutorial by the way.

-How can you improve things when you don't make mistakes?


bopperthijs posted Wed, 05 April 2006 at 4:05 PM

Reading and printing out the second page helps too. :blushing: :blushing: :blushing:

-How can you improve things when you don't make mistakes?


DrMCClark posted Sun, 23 April 2006 at 12:20 PM

Bagginsbill - I tried your material settings, but I think the camera angle I'm trying to use is screwing things up.  I see your using a v_Texture, so I tried flipping it over with a subtract node, then using a u_Texture node instead.  No dice.  Oh, Great Diety of Nods, wouldest thou teach me the error of my ways? ;)

DrMCClark posted Sun, 23 April 2006 at 12:20 PM

My material settings

Silke posted Mon, 24 April 2006 at 12:44 PM

ok. Bookmarked lol

Silke


bagginsbill posted Mon, 24 April 2006 at 2:07 PM

DrMCClark:

Strangely, I didn't get an ebot from your post - good thing you PM'd me.

Forgive the dumb question, but you do have ray tracing turned on in render options, right? The refraction and reflection nodes only come with ray tracing.

Also make sure the sand extends way out under the water. Otherwise, what you see through the water will be your sky dome, which is blue. (Or maybe not, I see some big white area in the upper right. What is that?

Failing that, what exactly are you using for the water geometry? The reason I ask is that the curved edge makes me think its a custom object you made. Are you sure the object vertices have proper UV coordinates? If you just model some shape but don't UV map it, it has the same UV coordinates at every point, which means the U or V nodes won't produce any variation. To test this, make a new material for the water. Turn off diffuse, specular, everything. Now connect a V_Texture_Coordinate to the Ambient_Color input and set Ambient_Value to 1. Render. Your water object should have a smooth, black-to-white gradient from one edge to the other. If its all gray or white or black, whatever shade, but just one shade everywhere, then the problem is you don't have any texture coordinates on the geometry.

If the refraction and UV coordinates are working, then I may be seeing another problem. I can see a shadow under the more distant parts of the water, where it curves a lot. (You'll need to fix that by lowering the water) But meanwhile, because I can see "under" the water, I can see that the shadow is very blue-green. So your sand surface under the water is going to give the refraction a blue-green tint anyway.  Try changing the sand to white, at least to see if that's the problem. You'll notice in my render that the sand was much lighter. If the sand is already dark aqua, then the entire surface will be aqua.

Let me know what you find after answering these questions. If none of these fixes it, we can work on it some more, but I'll need more information.

By the way, good catch. I noticed you fixed a bug in my material. I accidentally deleted the connection to the reflection_Value input. You figured it out on your own. My mistake would cause the foam to be reflective as well, which is obviously not desirable :) 


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)


DrMCClark posted Mon, 24 April 2006 at 6:50 PM

bagginsbill -

Yes, raytracing is on, 3 bounces, 3 pixel samples

I thought the big white thing in the upper white was the foam, but by the way you're asking, I'm apparently mistaken.

I used a 1 Macro Circle from RNDA's Microcosm.  But as you suggest, it looks like crap.  Behold!  My beach is now an oil slick!

 


DrMCClark posted Mon, 24 April 2006 at 6:53 PM

PS Anybody else having problems with Firefox and this new message interface?  I had to use (shudder) IE to reply 👎


DrMCClark posted Tue, 25 April 2006 at 5:14 PM

Here's the latest try, bagginsbill.  By the looks of it, I don't have the water plane high enough above the sand, but this is about as high as I can put it without it "floating" at this camera angle.  I could try to steepen the sand's angle, but too much and it's less a beach and more a cliff.  Ideas?

DrMCClark posted Thu, 27 April 2006 at 6:39 AM

I realized that part of my problem was the scale of things.  Bagginsbill was working with thing's scaled around 1-10K, while I'm between 100K-1M, so the nodes' effect were being stretched too thin.  I tweaked the scale factors, which fixed the clouds, and improved the water some, but it's proximity to the sand underneath is still causing problems (bagginsbill - works on this as we speak ;-)

Another thing I'm runing into it the "corn row" effect of stretching the X-scale so much.  I had adjusted the cellular node's x-factor to account, but as you can see, it's not quite right.... Ideas?


bagginsbill posted Thu, 27 April 2006 at 12:16 PM

Attached Link: Thread for dealing with textures that are obviously repeating.

DMc,

First, switch the Noise_Type on the Cellular node to "Improved". This will get rid of SOME of the row patterning.

Then read the linked thread. That was how I dealt with a repeating tile texture that was obviously repeating into the distance.

You can use fBm, Fractal_Sum, Turbulence, any of those can distort the pattern. However, be careful - I've been testing them today on these large surfaces and they ALL contain the corn row pattern within them. Obviously, Poser's random number generator completely sucks.

So distorting one with another may just not work well here.

Sigh.


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DrMCClark posted Thu, 27 April 2006 at 9:27 PM

I've been playing around with ways to disrupt the corn rows, no dice either... I guess I'll have to push the camera closer and around a bit.  (I've been meaning to get a better handle on camera intricacies anyways.)  It's not the angle I was looking for, but this won't be the first time my artistic vision is foiled by the whimsies of Poser ;-p

(At the risk of sounding greedy, any luck with the water?)


BastBlack posted Sat, 29 April 2006 at 2:43 PM

Hmmm... Just thinking. But how might it turn out if you change the focal length of the camera in P6? Perhaps adding blur to distant objects with say, a 25-35mm lens would help camoflage the cornrows? bB


DrMCClark posted Sat, 29 April 2006 at 2:56 PM

Great minds think alike ;)  In fact, I'm experimenting with depth of field on my previous render.  I'm using 50mm and an f-stop of 22 on it (because the 2 characters are about 200" apart) on it and it's looking good so far.   I'll probably post it as a "redux" to show how it adds to the image.

The downside is that this is really kicking up render time.  I had to crank up pixel sampling to 15 to keep the out-of-focus parts from looking grainy.  Still, bB, I think it'll be a way to hide the rows.


BastBlack posted Sat, 29 April 2006 at 8:31 PM

^^ Perhaps you can render the backgrpound alone, render the figures later, then composite them together in photoshop or, load the rendered background as a background picture in Poser and select "render over background picture." How's that? bB


DrMCClark posted Sat, 29 April 2006 at 11:08 PM

I've let renders go overnight, if not longer.  The first image in my gallery took 23 hours because I'd turned on AO and had a mirror, which just drove Firefly nuts.  Still I was very pleased with how that came out, so I don't mind letting this one run its course.  (Work's been a bitch lately anyways, so it's not I've got a ton of time to play with Poser... not like some people I know who can play with Poser at work ;-)

What driving me nuts, though, P6's fool memory limit.  I had to dump a bunch of stuff from it because it ate up too much memory, even with smaller buckets and smaller/fewer textures. 


BastBlack posted Sun, 30 April 2006 at 12:54 PM

At work??? =o I have trouble with renders too. I tend to render in layers, but it still takes too long. :( bB


DrMCClark posted Sun, 30 April 2006 at 2:38 PM

Well, hopefully my patience will pay off.  I'll let you know when the redux is done & posted.  I'm still contemplating how to get bagginsbill's spiffy water texture to play nice with me. 


DrMCClark posted Sun, 07 May 2006 at 11:23 AM

Ok, here's my latest try.

I've about got it where I like, but as you can see, it's still not quite right.  Instead of the "white foam edge/", I'm getting black or some crazy dark color.  The problem is that the water plane intersects into the sand (to give it that curved edge) and I assume the raytrace bias of refract node is the cause, but I don't know how to fix it.

Also, the sand's poking through a bit.  I'm going to try adding a u_texture node to better control the height of the sand's cellular.  Better suggestions are welcomed. ;-)


DrMCClark posted Sun, 07 May 2006 at 11:27 AM

Here's the MAT arrangement.

I added a pow function (set pretty high) to scrunch up the blend across the larger water plane.  I also tied it to the fbm node so the foam would fade as it went out.  I might create a separate node with an even higher pow value to more finely control the foam.


SoulTaker posted Sun, 18 June 2006 at 7:36 PM

thanks Bagginsbill, this has been a big help, thanks


rowlando posted Tue, 22 May 2007 at 10:41 PM

Thanks so much bagginsbill

Wow really great,

Rowlando

Seek what you can never loose


AnAardvark posted Thu, 09 July 2009 at 8:39 AM

I've tried, twice, to build this shader using the jpeg, but neither time did I get anything like a reasonable effect. Maybe I'm missing a connection, or it might be because I'm applying it to an existing water prop. If anyone has a version as a material file, can you send me site mail so that I can give you my email to send it directly?
thanks
AnAardvark

Quote - Ok now for the complicated one. This is the water and foam for the hi-res square.

In the upper right is the fBm and math function to generate the foam structure. This is passed through a math function only so I can easily turn it off without disconnecting it. I just set the math value to 0. The fBm produces white where I want foam. This is fed to the diffuse_value, so where there is no foam, the square produces no diffuse light.

To the left of the fBm is a math function which "inverts" the foam map. This becomes my clear water map. In other words, where the water is clear, this is white. Where the foam is, this is black. I feed this to the specular value, because I don't want specular reflections on the foam - just the water. I also feed this to the reflection and refraction values. Again, I only want those effects on the water, not the foam.

The reflect node is straightforward. You can adjust the value (.2) up or down to suit your taste. Don't make it too high or the water won't look real.

I've done a coupld tricks on the refract node. First, I set the softness to .5 - this makes the water a little murky. You can set it to 0 for crystal clear water. But surf always has some sand and bubbles in it and this takes care of it. Second, I set the RayBias to 1 inch. This means that any object within an inch of the surface will not be "seen" by the refraction. Or something like that. Anyway, it is this value that makes the edge of the water look white where it comes in close contact with the sand. I set the Refract background color to white and this makes the nice foamy edge on the water. Pretty cool, huh? Its actually a bug that I turned into a feature.

The v texture coordinate of the square drives the blender which chooses what color to tint the water. I used aqua and very light gray. Play with other colors here. Please realize, this is a trick and I have carefully contrived my scene to let this work. If the camera was seeing a curve around the water, it won't look right. I think of ways to deal with that, but for now, just make the sand-water interface roughly aligned with the X axis and all will be copacetic.

Finally, the Displacement is a combination of a Fractal_Sum and the Foam. You can try other functions instead of Fractal_Sum, like Turbulence, Waves, Spots, etc. Lots of different effects are possible.

To get good specular glints off the water, you need to either have some pretty violent displacement or, as I have done in my picture, put the sun back enough so it shines somewhat towards the camera.


bagginsbill posted Thu, 09 July 2009 at 9:46 AM

This is a shader I wouldn't publish now - it has all kinds of things wrong with it. Be that as it may, what are the results you're getting.

You mentioned using a water prop. What sort of results are you getting? 

Did you try your copy of the shader on a one-sided square? If if works right on the square, then the shader is fine, and it's a difference in the prop.

First does it work on a square for you?

Then I have more questions.


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AnAardvark posted Thu, 09 July 2009 at 11:23 AM

Quote - This is a shader I wouldn't publish now - it has all kinds of things wrong with it. Be that as it may, what are the results you're getting.

You mentioned using a water prop. What sort of results are you getting? 

Did you try your copy of the shader on a one-sided square? If if works right on the square, then the shader is fine, and it's a difference in the prop.

First does it work on a square for you?

Then I have more questions.

I'll get back to you next week when I get back from vacation.


AnAardvark posted Mon, 13 July 2009 at 12:24 PM

Using the high-res square worked perfectly.


bagginsbill posted Mon, 13 July 2009 at 12:42 PM

OK Then most likely there is a UV mapping problems. The color gradient of this shader is driven by the value of the V coordinate of each point.

Is your water prop UV mapped?


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AnAardvark posted Mon, 13 July 2009 at 3:14 PM

Quote - OK Then most likely there is a UV mapping problems. The color gradient of this shader is driven by the value of the V coordinate of each point.

Is your water prop UV mapped?

I'll find out in about a week when my computer gets back from being repaired. (The good news is I have a recent backup, the bad news is that I might need it.)


bagginsbill posted Mon, 13 July 2009 at 3:23 PM

Take your time. I'll be here :-)


Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)