Attached Link: Vanlippe's Animating a Waterfall Tutorial

As someone was asking about animating a waterfall, and people keep asking every so often, I am hosting Richard Vanlippe's "Animating a Waterfall" tutorial.

His site has been gone for some time now and although Zhann did host it for a while, her site is also no longer accessible.

So to keep this invaluable tutorial alive, that still works even now in Bryce7.1 (I've been testing it!), here's the link for it.

Here I've been playing with the waterfall:

It looks different to Vanlippe's as I've also been playing with the IBL, which becomes quite render intensive, if like me you like doing things as big as your screen will let you! Lol! The full size of this took a day and a night to render...

awesome, and way t go on the re hosting the tute thingy as well.. ...

Thx Fran I been looking for this again for a while!

Oh, cool!
Thanks, Fran! :-)

Corrie

Fran, have you got a link to the actual animated waterfall?

skiwillgee.

Unfortunately, even using the Wayback Machine to access what's left of Richard Vanlippe's website, the quicktime of the animation just refused to load.

I was going to follow the tutorial through to the end and produce (hopefully) an animation but I've been a bit busy lately.

I don't suppose anyone else has a copy of the original animation????

We'll make some new ones Fran, hang in there:-)

Yes, that's what I'm going to try today.  Let's all have a go!  It'd be great to see what everyone's efforts look like.

Rendered all night but found I'd forgotten to animate the upper section of the falls ggg!

Trying again.

Aw, Fran, sorry. :-(

But did it look great, already?

Corrie

Not too bad actually, it's slow rendering the full version, mainly because I'm trying to render a version of my entry for the Bryce challenge at the same time... Good job I've got a quad core PC!

So how's your attempt at this coming Peedy?

I haven't had the time to start yet, Fran.
But I will give it a try.

Corrie

I certainly hope you do, I found the tut to be pretty simple, and have now finished rendering the animation result (popped a few sounds on to finish it off,) and it's now on the last page of the tutorial - at the very bottom.

http://www.franontheedge.com/animating_vanlippes_waterfall.html

WOW, that looks fantastic, Fran!
Well done!
Love the sound with it, too.
Gorgeous!

Corrie

Turned out pretty neat Fran.

Super job Fran.  Loop it continuously with a video editor and you have a soothing screen saver or such.  I'm impressed.

Thanks, peedy, clay, skiwillgee.

So.... where's the next waterfall animation guys n' girls?

*poke, poke, pokey!

Not from me, Fran.
I just can't get the animation thing going!
Sorry, girl.

Corrie

Corrie,

Why not?  Do you need any help?  I'd be happy to help if I can.

No, thanks, Fran.
I think one of my biggest problems is that I don't have any interest in doing animations.
I love watching it, but doing? Nopes.

I did make a lovely scene, including the waterfall, though. :-)
Will post it next Friday.

Corrie

Quote - No, thanks, Fran.
I think one of my biggest problems is that I don't have any interest in doing animations.
I love watching it, but doing? Nopes.

I did make a lovely scene, including the waterfall, though. :-)
Will post it next Friday.

Corrie

Oh I see.  Having done a course in animation, I just think that way, but each to their own. 

I look forward to seeing your render of the scene though.

Here's the link to my image:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2178917

Corrie

Whooooo!  that's a high waterfall!

How come all of the image apart from the two birds on the log is a blue cast?

Do you use a blue haze?

Those 2 birds certainly stand out.  Did you make the bird model yourself?

I tried to find some bird models for my waterfall without much success, although how I would have animated them, I don't know.

I love high, big waterfalls.
Never have seen one for real, but this is one of the ideas I have of them. :-)

The blue is from the sky and lighting.
And yes, a blue haze.
I don't know why the birds didn't get the haze, too.

All animals are from 3d Meshed:

http://www-roc.inria.fr/gamma/gamma/download/download.php

I don't know if their models can be animated.

Corrie

Quote - I love high, big waterfalls.
Never have seen one for real, but this is one of the ideas I have of them. :-)

I have and actually it was a lot smaller, and a lot higher than the Vanlippe waterfall.

Quote - The blue is from the sky and lighting.
And yes, a blue haze.
I don't know why the birds didn't get the haze, too.

Ah, I thought it was, I'm not too keen on using haze, so much so that I've saved a default.br7 file with both haze and fog turned off, so that I don't have to keep on turning it off every time I open Bryce.

I like the birds.

Quote - All animals are from 3d Meshed: http://www-roc.inria.fr/gamma/gamma/download/download.php

I don't know if their models can be animated.

Anything can be animated if you can rig it. Thanks for the link, but I can't figure out how to download from there.  Pity as it's the only place I've seen so many birds.  Probably you have to pay to join or something.

Aha!  No, I found one that COULD be downloaded.

Oh.... no textures.  Bryce doesn't like it.

How on earth did you manage to get a properly textured bird into Bryce?

Sometimes I like a lot of haze.
It looks good in this image.
But usually I don't use that much, either.

No, no textures.
From some objects you can select different parts, so you can put different mats on.
Others don't have that option and I just put on a mat that's close to what I want.
Usually you can get a lot done with the objects, though.

And yes, the site is free as are the downloads. :-D
Look for the obj and 3D ones.
They can be dowloaded, as far as I know.
And if you use 3dMax, they have for that program, too.

Corrie

Quote - Sometimes I like a lot of haze.
It looks good in this image.
But usually I don't use that much, either.

No, no textures.
From some objects you can select different parts, so you can put different mats on.
Others don't have that option and I just put on a mat that's close to what I want.
Usually you can get a lot done with the objects, though.

And yes, the site is free as are the downloads. :-D
Look for the obj and 3D ones.
They can be dowloaded, as far as I know.
And if you use 3dMax, they have for that program, too.

Corrie

Ah right, I'll keep looking then. No I don't have 3ds Max but sometimes that format works better than .obj does in Bryce.

By the way, I meant to ask you - did you use the terrain image that came with the tutorial for your waterfall or did you actually paint your own terrain? (Either in Bryce's terrain editor or in a paint/draw prog like PhotoShop?)

I ask because I tried making a terrain from drawn greys in PhotoShop, but it turned out too smooth, not stepped enough.

So for the sake of speed I reverted to using the original image from Richard Vanlippe's tut.

I just wondered if you used that too or created your own?

... come to that, I'm now wondering if the smooth one I made would actually be so bad... I never did try it out completely.

I used the terrain image that came with the tutorial.

Hehe
This tut is a lot more than just a tut, huh? :-)

Corrie

I know why my version of the terrain didn't initially look right, it's just that I used a soft brush to paint it, instead of a hard one - but I've been testing it out, it's not so bad.

I'll try rendering it again now that my email's sorted out - that frightened me - but it's sorted now.

I'm just finding that the 3rd terrain needs to be a little bit further forward than the others.  That's the one with the drops mat on it.

Otherwise I have one terrain with a water on it (the pool mat) and one with the stone or rock mat.

Corrie, did you use 2 or 3 terrains?

I noticed that Vanlippe mentioned using 3 but I think he meant 2 with slightly different streams... not sure though.

I animated 2 terrain's mats, the pool one and the drops one.

I used 3 terrains:
One for the steps; one for the fall water and one for the drops.
The last 2 I enlarged a little bit to get the right effect.

Corrie

Oh - snap! 

Lol!

Although I didn't enlarge mine but just shifted them forward a bit.

I've also found that you can use the same technique for animating falling steam...

It might need a bit more tweeking but it did work.