Water?

[flap-jack]

Heyyo

I was curios if anyone could give me a hand with making a realistic water texture in 3DS MAX 7. I've tryed and tryed again, but to no avail.


God bless
thanks

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

Well... it depends. What kind of water are you looking to make? A puddle... water in a glass... a river... an ocean... a water droplet? There are so many ways to go about this... I could try to help... but I need a little more information first. Let us know what you're trying to achieve and we'll see what we can do.

[flap-jack]

I want to create an ocean. that will both work goo if I want to render stormy condtions and regular wheather. if stormy won't work, I will just go with a regular ocean.


God bless
thanks

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

Well... I might... might be able to help. Let me know if you want something like the pic below. I made it with the help of a tutorial... it's not the best looking scene... but I just wanted to try a few things out. If it's what you're looking for... I might try to write a small tutorial on how it was made when I get home from work tomorrow. It was done in Max 6... so I'm sure it would work in Max 7. (I'm hoping you have some experience with Max... I'm not great at explaining things... and the less I have to explain... the better. Although I'll try my best either way!) It's mainly a plane with some animated noise modifiers... not that hard... just difficult to explain in full detail.

[flap-jack]

that is very good

I do have good knowledge of max

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

Ok... I'll see what I can do for you tomorrow. I might even have a stormy waters version aswell... just give me some time and I'll see what I can come up with for you. Good night!

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

Well here's my "short" tutorial on the water in that scene.

Ok, first create a plane in the top viewport. Name it Sea. Set it's length and width to 20,000... and set it's length and width segments to 50. Last thing is to change the density render multiplier to something bigger like 8. (This way it will have more detail when we render... but not slow down our viewports.)

Now create a camera in the front viewport somewhere around 300 to 350 units above the plane. Change it's lense size to 28mm and change the perpective viewport to the camera's view. Then pull the camera back about 4000 units so we can get a better view. While you're at it... change the animation length to 200 frames.

Next add a Volume Select modifier to the plane, change the Stack Selection Level to Vertex, and the Select By Volume to Cylinder. Go into subobject selection mode and select it's gizmo... in the top viewport... move the gizmo down to right under the camera. Now scale it down so that in the camera viewport... you only see about 9 - 11 or so selected vertices. Now enable soft selection and set the falloff to 12,000. (This is so the noise we add will scale down in the distance.)

Now add a Noise modifier to the stack and name it Noise Left. Enable Fractal and then add a Z strength of 30. Then enable Animate Noise and change the frequency to .05. Now select it's gizmo and in the left viewport... rotate it about 60 degrees clockwise, then in the top viewport, rotate it 45 degrees clockwise. (We're adding some angles to the waves...) Copy and paste the Noise Left modifier and name it Noise Right. In the top viewport rotate it's gizmo 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Now... select the Noise Left modifier's gizmo, go to frame 200, enable Auto Key and in the top viewport... move it 2000 units left and 2000 units down. Select the Noise Right's gizmo and in the top viewport move it 2000 units right and 2000 units down. (Now they're moving in somewhat oppisite directions... simulating currents and wind.) Oh yeah... turn off Auto Key now. Goto frame 0, right click on the key and select the first Phase element. Change the Out curve to the second curve (it's a curved line that angles down after the vertex... it's called a linear attack. I can thank my tutorial for that information!) Then hit the arrow that points to the right... next to the out curve button. This will assign it to the In curve of the next keyframe. Do this to the other Phase element for your Sea plane. (This is done so that in an animation... it's rendered as already in motion instead of starting up and slowing down at the begining and ending of the animation.) You might just want to render a still frame... but with all this being done... you can render out a still at any frame you want and get a different look.

Well... that's it for... uhh... modelling the geometry? If you can call it that. Now a simple material for the water and it's done. Here's what I have for the water in my pic. Open your material editor and in a free slot change the Diffuse color to 117, 117, 117 RBG values. Set Specular color to white. Set the Specular level to 200 and Glossiness to 30. In the Maps rollout... change the Reflection amount to 75, and add a Falloff map to the Reflection slot. Set it's Falloff type to Fresnel, change the Override Material IOR's Index of Refraction setting to 0.6 and add a Raytrace map to the Side slot. Go back to the top of the material and in the Maps rollout change the Bump amount to 20. Add a Mask map to the Bump slot and add a Smoke map to the Map slot. Set the Source to Explicit Map Channel... change it's Size to 0.005, Iterations to 20, Exponent to 0.4 and set Color 2 to White. Go to frame 200, enable Auto Key and then set the Phase to 10. Turn off Auto Key and then change the Out curves at keyframes at 0 and 200 to a linear attack like before. Last thing is to add a Gradient map to the Mask slot of our mask map and set the Gradient Type to Radial. Expand the Output Rollout and enablr Invert. (This helps with the illusion of distance like we did with the Noise modifiers.)

Now add some lights... I suggest a skylight and an omni light. Place the omni in the top viewport near the top of the plane and then adjust it's height in the camera's viewport to get a decent amount of highlights and reflections in the water. I also changed the skylight's color to a greyish color to add some contrast. Here's a render I did while writing this tutorial. Just a simple light blue sky.

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

Here's one with a pitch black sky. Just to show the water's reflection abilities. Let me know if anything's confusing and I'll try to help make it unconfusing! I hope this helps!

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

I was just wondering if you tried making your water yet... and how it worked out for you if you did?

[Cmart]

hey man thanks for the tutorial.

I tried it and got confused in some places.

Im going to try to read through it again. I will let you know if i have the same problems.

Thanks!

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

No problem Cmart... I know it sounds confusing... but once you get it going it's not that bad. If there's anything you need explained further just let me know... I'll do my best to help!

[Cmart]

ok i have it pretty close to what you have.

Im not getting what you are getting with the material though. IM just getting a very white color.

I think im going wrong where it says put the falloff map somewhere, i dont think i have it in the right place. If you could help i would appreciate it.

Thanks

[Cmart]

ah one place im not understanding is putting the raytrace in the side slot, after i put the falloff.

Nevermind i think i got it!!!!

[Marty_McFly-3DT]

Well... let me know if you got it. If not I can get a screenshot or two.

[flap-jack]

I am sorry I have not posted for a while, I didnt realize you had replied cuz I usualy get emailed and I dindnt this time. I will get working on your water right away and let'cha know!

Thanks for the tutorial