water texture question

[eljefeloco]

How do I make my water look like the attached? I've been faced with creating some realistic water effects for a picky client, and I need to render water as a nice big drop as well as splashing, both on a white background.

I've done some initial tests and I'm nowhere close to where I need to be. The detail that I'm trying to achieve is the soft black outline that surrounds the water shape. And since everything needs to be on a seamless white background, I'm not having much luck.

Anyone have any ideas or know of a good tutorial on how to do this?

[Andrew March]

Real flow or blender fluid dynamics i'd say.

[Tobian]

As for the actual animation, that's going to be REALLY hard in Lightwave, as it doesn't have a fluid simulation nativelly. You could fake it with morphs. If it's just for stills, then just model it to look like that :)

As for the surfaces, that's a lot easier. The thing that's confusing you here is water has no 'texture'. All you are seeing is the environment being reflected and refracted by the water.

So with that in mind Try making a big white card behind where your drop is seen by the camera, but place objects around the scene in front of the camera. If you have a black environment, with some bounce cards surrounding the water droplet (behind the camera).

Try pluging the dielectric material node into the water, and set it's IOR to 1.3(ish). That should give a nice looking water, as long as you have something to reflect (and reflections and refractions enabled!)

[daforum]

There was a good tutorial about water and working with caustics in the Quick Questions section of 3D World issue 107

http://www.3dworldmag.com/page/3dworld?entry=3d_world_107_s_quick

Download the Lightwave files and have a look at the final animation movie.

[m0184you]

Here is one tip for you. I know about it by reading some explaining of Surface Editor couple year's ago and the man said "For God's Sake Use it!". And i did.

I understand that you have water (object or emiter/Hyper Voxels) and one background, without any other object on the scene to be reflected/refracted in your water ... and ALSO you want look like pictures that you have uploaded above ... so here is the tip. Just something for you to start AND PLAY until you are satisfied!

I make some null/emiter, i activate it in Hyper Voxels panel, make quick surface settings (SurfaceBasic Tab - play with them until you make your goal) AND THE CATCH IT'S IN ENVIRONMENT SubTab (see the picture bellow). Change Reflection/Refraction option to Raytracing+Spherical Map, load image you want to be reflected/refracted on your's particles ... AND WITHOUT NONE OBJECT IN THE SCENE you have reflections/refractions on your object/water.

If you want to make custom objects/water splatters in Modeler, you could and then for material in Surface Editor make adjustments AND ALSO GO TO ENVIRONMENT TAB and insert picture you want to be reflected/refracted EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE any object on the scene to bi reflected/refracted.

>> PLAY WITH REFLECTION parameter then (0 - no reflection; 100 - max reflection) same with REFRACTION parameter.

To achieve look that you "describe" above you need to find proper image/gradient on image ... SO PLAY!

Anoter small tip ... if you want specularity like in pictures above USE TWO/THREE/FOUR ... lights direct to object/water ...

PS: I always thought that i can do almost everything in LW, even water ... dont'you? :)

Hope this helps!

[eljefeloco]

Cool, thanks for all the tips. I'm gonna pick this back up tomorrow, I'll let you know how it goes...