Hi guys! As a newbie I just wonder what is the best technique to make a tiny, dark area on your island etc where it touches the water?

I tried to use mixed mats with enviro sensitivity but I couldn't achieve that distinct look having a well defined small dark strip on the shore/island. (I would be nice to have a "water sensivity" button/slider) :-)

I was able to do that with environmental influence and fine tuning of the blend control. My scene was a stream bank, not a beach, but the altitude difference was not great.

Try using both slope and altitude and keeping the blend value very low (5% to 10%). With such a low blend number, the mixing control becomes very sensititve, so it's best to enter numbers manually, instead of using the slider, and use decimal fractions (e.g. 48.7%, rather than 49%, etc.).

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If you're using Infinite, then go and download "The Island" by Monsoon over at 3D Commune.  It includes both a sea, and a beach material that use the "Distance to Object Below" function to generate foam, and a wet beach.  And it's free!

You will learn a lot by studying how he has put the materials together.

http://havenpics.woodmuffin.com/silverblade/last_oasis1.jpg

in that image, iI adjusted the altitude settings to get the darker material lower and roughly looking like it was affected by water...then in 2d afterwards, I used the BURN tool to slightly darken th edges, then SMUDGE to blend it a bit :)

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Good idea to look into Monsoon's fine work!

Doh, I can't open Monsoon's file in my Vue5inf...thanks for the tips anyway. It's easy to do it in Pshop (burn) but I wanted Vue to do the job... :-D

If I could find an already tweaked water sensitive texture then it would be of course easy to modify it; until that I'm going to mix some mats and try to fine tune the result of the mix.

Is this the effect you want, attileus? The above is just two planes (to keep things simple), an inclined plane (the "land") and a water plane. The water plane has one of the presets applied to it. The inclined plane has a simple texture applied.

I'll show the function for the inclined plane in the next post....

Cheers,
Diolma

Here is the function graph. You may have to play with the colour map to get the (vertical) width of the dark strip correct for your requirements.

PS - I tried to keep everything to a minimum, just to avoid problems (eg shadows) distracting attention from the concept.

You can do exactly the same sort of thing if you're using a mixed material for your island texture - just insert the the "dist to obj. below" and colour map between the func for the texture that meets the water and the colour node.

Hope that helps....

Cheers,
Diolma

Thanks Diolma for your microtut; I think that's it! I'm going to save this tut and try asap.

Many thanks!

Yippee...I've got it; it works perfectly; thanks Diolma! :-D

Glad to help:-)) I cannot claim any responsibility for the method,  I learned it from tutorials (and the now falling-apart V5I manual).

BTW - when I said "You can do exactly the same sort of thing if you're using a mixed material for your island texture - just insert the the "dist to obj. below" and colour map between the func for the texture that meets the water and the colour node." - I may have been a bit hasty. It might not be that simple. I'd have to try it out myself to know for sure. But I suspect you'll sort something out.

I might (if I have time) have a go at it tomorrow (it's near my bedtime now, here in the UK). If I come up with anything sensible, I'll post it here. Others might like to know, too...

Oh, and be warned: the "dist to obj below" will slow up your render time (it's done by using the render engine to send out vertical downwards rays, per pixel - or something like that - time-consuming)..

Cheers,
Diolma

Also... 'dist to object below' is only available in Vue Infinite.

One nice improvement , once you have that node set up in the material graph, is that you can add a similar graph to the 'reflection' parameter of the material so that the darker band becomes more reflective to simulate how wet sand really behaves with light.

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Thank you guys! Now, when I visited the scary realm of the Functions I have another question: how can you keep your island trees ABOVE the water so that they wont go beneath a (water)plane?  A brilliant example here:  http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1202114&Start=1&Artist=ShadowDN1&ByArtist=Yes

I know that you can have nice results with mixing ecosys mats but it would probably look more elegant with a certain function...any solution to this problem?

That should happen automatically (unless you've changed some settings)..

Eco-system will not populate near "unfriendly" objects (including water planes), unless the plane has been set to "eco-system friendly" - see above pic for example of "unfriendly" water plane. The ringed icon in the materials preview should be blue, not pink. (pink = eco-system friendly).
Also, ensure that "populate under foreign objects where possible" is turned off.

Of course, if what you want to do is have some parts of the eco-system (eg plants) being hydro-phobic, whilst other bits are hydro-philic (eg sea-weed) and yet more are neutral (eg rocks), well, that's a different kettle of fish altogether. And a lot more difficult..

PS - the kettle of fish should probably be placed without using the eco-system! :-))

Cheers,
Diolma

Many thanks again Diolma! (I didn't get the automatic thread update message mail so I had to check it manually) I've totally forgot that little weed icon...make planes unfriendly; got it!   :-D

I've made some testrenders using your dark strip tut; the drawback is that my original (complex)texture is ruined when I attach the function to the texture color output; it changes to the worse but yes, I get a desired dark/wet strip...that unfortunately costs a change in the original texture (becoming "flat").

I think e-on should implement a simple menu/button/slider for this particular problem for a better result.

Many thanks anyway; your suggestions were very useful and I learned a lot!  /Attila

"unfortunately costs a change in the original texture (becoming "flat")."...

I had a horrible suspicion that that might happen, which is why I said "BTW - when I said "You can do exactly the same sort of thing if you're using a mixed material for your island texture - just insert the the "dist to obj. below" and colour map between the func for the texture that meets the water and the colour node." - I may have been a bit hasty."

Since I'll probably want to do the same sort of thing in the not too distant future, I'll have a go at sorting that problem. But it might take me a while... IF I ever get it sorted I'll post as a "Macro-tut" :-))

Thanks for your thanks. I'm just pleased that someone got some help that I provided (it helps swell my ego).

Cheers,
Diolma