Need cool waterfall help?

[DFUNC]

Hi everybody,

I?m trying to make a cool waterfall. It shoud look like huge amounts of water are running over the video walls.

This is where I am so far:
http://www.d-func.com/not_so_good_waterfall.mov

I use Blender 3D and somehow the waterfall is missing something. I?m not sure.

Does anybody has an advice or a more realistic waterfall to show?

Thanks a lot,
Jan

[syzygy]

convincing water is really hard to do in 3d rendering - its only quite recently that even the big SFX houses have been able to do really convincing CG water effects.

My advice is to film some flowing water in small scale. Once it is projected big, no one will know that the original 'waterfall' was only a foot high ;)

A good trick to make small scale water look bigger is to slow down the footage a bit so that the water takes longer to fall through the shot.

Dan.

[Syntax]

Hey DFunc, its looking pretty good...not bad...I never tried doing a waterfall before but my first impression was that it needs a little variation of the lighting. Lighting has always seemed to be the main "problem" when something seemed to be missing. Try adding some caustics. Other than that it looks cool. What kind of video will you throw behind it? Just wondering. I got blender 3d a few days ago but haven't had timne to learn it yet. It looks pretty good.

Hope that helps

[DFUNC]

I dont want anything "behind" that waterfall. Just a pure cascade.

I made it using a blue plane shape & applying the particle effect.

This is the 4th day I?m using Blender, so I have no idea what "caustics" mean, but I think I saw a button like that. I?ll play around.

THX @ Everyone

[TheBoyCalledWonder]

In MAX I'd try a high glossiness and specular level...

[many2]

Originally posted by syzygy

A good trick to make small scale water look bigger is to slow down the footage a bit so that the water takes longer to fall through the shot.
Dan.

Exactly ! And this apply to 3d too :)


Hints to create it in 3d, using a 3d plane as a base model

--> animated your texture coordinates : create a vertically seamless texture representing water and use it as a diffuse map. Animate the texture coordinates in the vertical axis to simulate the effect of water going down.

--> water usually has no color : when you look at a lake's surface what you see is a reflection of its environment. You can give your water a blueish tint if you want, but do not forget to give your water a reflection map. Spherical reflection maps, at the difference of raytraced reflection, can be rendered very fast, so don't be afraid to use them.

--> add some bump : just like joeproper said, you can add some bump. Together with reflection this will give even better results. Use your bitmap with animated texture coordinates as a source for your bump effect. If you want to experiment with this even more you can play with displacement maps : these requires that you add a lot of subdivisions to your plane mesh because the map will move the vertices, but they give more depth than bump.

--> splashes and foam : at the bottom of your fall you should add some splashes going in all directions. Some white foam at the bottom of your image would be great too.

[DFUNC]

Thanks for that in-depth report. Really helpful!

I understood everything besides the "add some bump" part.

I know how to apply bumps (displacement maps) to spheres or cubes, but how can I apply them to particles?

Besides that I added a motion blur (2.00) to smooth it.

Thanks, Jan

[many2]

about bump : this only applies if you use a 3d plane with an animated texture, not if use particles. You can use your particle effect render as an animated texture for the plane though.

[videotechno]

i tried to make a little somethin', but it looks a bit too curtain-ish:
http://www.khord.com/vt/grayfalls1.mov
PM me if you want a less-compressed version of it.

i'll be driving past a decent waterfall in my hometown in a coupla days. if i remember, i'll bring a camera with me and shoot some junk. [or were you only interested in CG-ish stuff?]

[DFUNC]

Seems like I dont have your codec?
What it it?

[videotechno]

oh yeah--there's a program out called particle illusion that you might like as well. i bought the cheaper version of it a while back. here's the website: http://www.wondertouch.com/default.asp

[videotechno]

indeo 5.1

what's a codec you like?

[videotechno]

here's a slightly-tweaked and less-compressed version...:
http://www.khord.com/vt/grayfalls2.mov
still doesn't look waterfallish enough tho'

[Amukidi]

4 days eh? Dunno which part of Germany you live in, but I've seen some pretty fine waterfalls there - As Dan says - water's extremely hard to emulate (and I often wonder why people bother to try when 2 thirds of the planet is covered in the stuff) and I reckon a bus ticket to the mountains is in order if you want it to look good. If you really can't get out, then as the others have said, make your own with real water and slow it down a bit, maybe add a bit of motion blur etc. Method? Get a washing up bowl. cut a long slot in it using a knife heated up iover the gas (you'll need to experiment with the dimensions, so start with a thin slot) stick some waterproof gaffer tape over it, elevat the bowl to head height (ie, stand it on something) fill it with water, set your camera up and let it go! If you live in a rural area, get a mate to help and take this kit into the country and try cascading the water over different surfaces, rock, wood etc. This method will be guaranteed to be 10,000 times better than anything you can come up with in Blender, with the added satisfaction that you made it yourself.

[Amukidi]

Very nice clip videotechno - but it doesn't look like water! it could be described as giving the feel of water, but none of the chaotic behaviour is there. I use water,in all its forms a lot in my work, so I'm simply not gonna be fooled by CG stuff, as I said, thats not to say your clip ain't good, just suggesting you get out there and shoot the real stuff! Don't forget to use manual focus btw!!

[fuussmuuss]

Particle Illusion and 2D is definately the way to go! Actually im playing with particle flow in 3dsmax7 and i cna tell you its really hard :(

i know Prticle Illusion from Wondertouch very well, and it works ok! its not complicated, renders fast and you could also find a finished preset of waterfalls in the gallery, free to download !!!!

[Amukidi]

"Particle Illusion and 2D is definately the way to go!"

But it costs nearly as much as a basic camcorder which, when combined with "Creative brain v1.2(tm)" will deliver a clip that looks real! None of the available packages have ever come close, imho, (the day after tomorrow wasn't half bad, but....) it's so easy and your work won't have that "Oh yeah, that's been made with (insert your fave plug-in here) "
Which would you rather be doing, sitting in front of some dry, un-intuitive interface for a week, or going out into the country and shooting it for real?

[fuussmuuss]

Yep you're right! 1000 points to Amukidi ! ;)

[levon]

blender cant do causics, you might want to try heaps of metaballs parented to a partiacle emitter, and turn dupliverts on.you will have to have alot of them though, and it might not look that real.

[seex]

CG generated forms like watter, fire and clouds are realy hard to simulate and they never look real even if they come from Dreamworks or pixar. You are planing to loop this clip of watter and give it a lot of exposure, wich menas that it will be ther all the time. This is important becouse when we see CG watter in a carton or film we only see a few seconds of the clip. Its not so hard to simulate something for such a short impression, and thats why it works. For your instalation i realy recomend you shoot the real thing and think about ways to loop it maybe also pann the shot ad slow motion, think of ways to make it work for a long time. Also keep as much of original resolution as possible watter is full of details you will want to preserve those for impact.

lightning watter is a tricky one, you will have the best resoluts on a dark background with back light (contra light). Watter doesent reflect much light or it only reflects to a limited angle, there is realy no way but to have light going trough it. Also to define the edges of the watter drops i recomed you have a white object or reflective surface (like alufoil) placed next to the watter, you will get that surface reflected on the edges of the drops and that will define them better. If you get a high freqency camera (to shoot more than 30 fps) you can realy get watter to look wet and organic.

The two clips i saw here dont convince me at all and i realy dont imagine them to run all night and have me believe its watter.

[DFUNC]

Maybe at the end of the night? :o

If anybody knows some clips on the web with waterfalls, please post here.

They should be full screen. Like in my first movie. No rocks or stuff like that. Many Thx.

[disassembler]

In addition to everyone elses comments:

Try to shoot video of all the following from the same angle.

Pour sugar out of a sugar bag with a black/white background and shoot. Do the same with water. Get some dry ice and put some water on it, then shoot. Get a spray bottle and set it so that it mists, shoot video of it. In the sink, place a black/white baking pan at a angle and turn on the faucet, shoot video.

What your doing is collecting textures. Be keen to observe all characteristics of a waterfall.

Anyhow composite all the shots together using masks and keying.

[disassembler]

I used multiple copies of the same water clip. I used a displacement effect and madd layer blend modes. Oh and having a background that shows displacement helps with a water like illusion.

Obviously this isn't photo real but imagine if the original footage was better.

CLICK for ghetto example. (http://www.dis-assembly.com/tc448/waater.avi)

[CA]

I wish I had a web site that I could upload a clip that I shot of a fountian during a wedding last year.

Its full frame and the water is flowinf very quickly. It might be what you are looking for. If you know of a way I can get it to you via The InterWeb, let me know


CA

you can PM me for my email Address

[DFUNC]

I tried Realflow. It looks very very promising.
But I can't connect it to Blender 3D.
:-(

[SilentEclipse]

Does anyone know if its possible to recreate this slow shutter speed water effect using a video camera?

Cascasding water (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~xhayward/kaniere%2010.jpg)

[WordVirus23]

compress to 10 megs or less and viola~!

http://www.vjcutup.tk/

Originally posted by CA
I wish I had a web site that I could upload a clip that I shot of a fountian during a wedding last year.

Its full frame and the water is flowinf very quickly. It might be what you are looking for. If you know of a way I can get it to you via The InterWeb, let me know


CA

you can PM me for my email Address

[fluchtpunkt]

use recorded, real life water(falls) as texture maps in 3d software.

[seex]

Does anyone know if its possible to recreate this slow shutter speed water effect using a video camera?

you wuld need to shoot each frame with a long exposure, judging from the posted photo id say its a 1/8 or 1/15 of a second. This means that you wuld need to shoot with 8 frames per second or 15 fps to get the full efect. In reality also shooting with 30 fps will blur the watter since to freeze it you wuld need to shoot with times shorter than 250/sec.

It is almost impossible tough to get such deetail (as on the photo) with a motion camera, the qality of each individual frame has far less deetail, maybe with 70mm film (baraka was shoot on that), but photographic lenses and films are much better qality (more deetail, sharper image better contrast...)