Animate Carrara water preset?

Bagboy

Hello-

Can the water presets that come with Carrara be animated?

And if so, which settings does one adjust?

I tried shuffling the fractal settings, and that may do it, but the settings themselves don't seem to change.

Any water experts here? ;)

Thanks for looking.

3dcal

Hi Bagboy,

I think you can animate any of the shader parameters......but if you want realistic water,
did you try adding an Ocean? It's one of the icons at the top......what version of Carrara are
you using?

Garstor

megacal said:

Hi Bagboy,

I think you can animate any of the shader parameters......but if you want realistic water,
did you try adding an Ocean? It's one of the icons at the top......what version of Carrara are
you using?

If I recall off the top of my head, the Ocean Primitive is only in Carrara Pro.

I have not done any serious animation in Carrara (yet); but I do want to make animating water one of the first things that I try.

Bagboy

megacal said:

Hi Bagboy,

I think you can animate any of the shader parameters......but if you want realistic water,
did you try adding an Ocean? It's one of the icons at the top......what version of Carrara are
you using?

Hi Megacal, and thanks for the tip.-

I'm using Carrrara Pro 8.1.1.12.

I'll take a look at the ocean primitive if need be. That may indeed be the way to go.

I'd dug out a "canal" out of my own model, added a surface for the water that fit into the canal, and applied a preset turbulent muddy water shader to it. I'd like to have it appear to move at least a little so it doesn't look frozen. :D

It would seem to me that one could jiggle the fractal setting to add some movement, but I wasn't sure what to adjust.

Maybe if I just shifted the center in the Transform panel of the Fractal Noise settings it would be enough.

Thanks again.

Garstor

Bagboy said:

I'd dug out a "canal" out of my own model, added a surface for the water that fit into the canal, and applied a preset turbulent muddy water shader to it. I'd like to have it appear to move at least a little so it doesn't look frozen. :D

The Ocean primitive does have a "waves follow the wind" and a direction setting. I believe that cripeman has a YouTube tutorial where he animated Ocean using a post card image of Chicago...the Ocean became Lake Michigan moving past the city line. I'd bet there is enough info there to get you started.

Bagboy

Garstor said:

Bagboy said:

I'd dug out a "canal" out of my own model, added a surface for the water that fit into the canal, and applied a preset turbulent muddy water shader to it. I'd like to have it appear to move at least a little so it doesn't look frozen. :D

The Ocean primitive does have a "waves follow the wind" and a direction setting. I believe that cripeman has a YouTube tutorial where he animated Ocean using a post card image of Chicago...the Ocean became Lake Michigan moving past the city line. I'd bet there is enough info there to get you started.

Thanks Garstor!

Hooray for Cripeman! Yeah, I love his tutorials. He's a treasure!

I'll have to look it up.

JoeMamma2000

Also, FWIW, I'd strongly recommend that if anyone is animating any type of water that you consider that in the vast majority of cases, waves are generated by wind, and are going on one direction. As has already been mentioned, the ocean primitive has a setting for that.

Far too often you see animated water that has nice looking waves, but they're bouncing around randomly and it looks very unnatural. I don't recall how the results of the animated ocean with wave direction actually appear, but I'd suggest you make sure your results look natural and fairly unidirectional.

As always, reference videos are quick and easy to find, and can help a lot with proper relative wave sizes and stuff like that.

Bagboy

JoeMamma2000 said:

Also, FWIW, I'd strongly recommend that if anyone is animating any type of water that you consider that in the vast majority of cases, waves are generated by wind, and are going on one direction. As has already been mentioned, the ocean primitive has a setting for that.

Far too often you see animated water that has nice looking waves, but they're bouncing around randomly and it looks very unnatural. I don't recall how the results of the animated ocean with wave direction actually appear, but I'd suggest you make sure your results look natural and fairly unidirectional.

As always, reference videos are quick and easy to find, and can help a lot with proper relative wave sizes and stuff like that.

Great analysis and advice, JoeM.

I didn't really dig too deeply into waves, so your points are well taken.

I'm testing moving the fractals around, in one direction as it turns out, so maybe this will work out okay all around.

I also should mention that I don't need too much detail, I don't think, so if I can get satisfactory results from the shaders , they will serve my purpose.

But, you've given me food for thought.

3dcal

Here's one I did a while back.......just an ebb & flow. :)

(can't use the script for some reason.....have to copy/paste the url)

Bagboy

BTW, Cripeman's tutorial on the Ocean Waves was informative as usual.

And the waves he showed looked pretty good.

Headwax

hi you can also use the terrain shader to simulate white water
from memory you can also stack modifiers eg wave modifier and noise modifier
and you can animate the bump channel, also use avi for your texture to moved bump across the water
you can also use avi in th e displacement channel to mimic wave movement

3dcal

Great suggestions, head wax. :)

WendyLuvsCatz

I animate the wave or ripples shader natural function in bump or displacement, it has completion, perpetration etc that can be oscillated for continual movement and centre H and V that can be translated for directional movement.

Jay_NOLA

You might want to consider getting the Brianorca Ocean Plugin for Carrara. It isn't that expensive.

http://www.brianorca.com/CarraraPluginOcean.html

Bagboy

megacal said:

Here's one I did a while back.......just an ebb & flow. :)

(can't use the script for some reason.....have to copy/paste the url)

Very nice!

Bagboy

wendy♥catz said:

I animate the wave or ripples shader natural function in bump or displacement, it has completion, perpetration etc that can be oscillated for continual movement and centre H and V that can be translated for directional movement.

Thanks Wendyluvscats!

I was trying this out and looks promising.

Can the wave loop? Completion goes from 0 to 100 for the waves, but I'm not clear on if that means one cycle, or what.

Bagboy

head wax said:

hi you can also use the terrain shader to simulate white water
from memory you can also stack modifiers eg wave modifier and noise modifier
and you can animate the bump channel, also use avi for your texture to moved bump across the water
you can also use avi in th e displacement channel to mimic wave movement

Ditto. Great suggestions, HW!

Thanks!

Bagboy

Jay_NOLA said:

You might want to consider getting the Brianorca Ocean Plugin for Carrara. It isn't that expensive.

http://www.brianorca.com/CarraraPluginOcean.html

Wow! Never saw this one before. Thanks for the heads up. :)

evilproducer

Bagboy said:

wendy♥catz said:

I animate the wave or ripples shader natural function in bump or displacement, it has completion, perpetration etc that can be oscillated for continual movement and centre H and V that can be translated for directional movement.

Thanks Wendyluvscats!

I was trying this out and looks promising.

Can the wave loop? Completion goes from 0 to 100 for the waves, but I'm not clear on if that means one cycle, or what.

0 would be at the beginning of the scene and 100 at the end. As Wendy mentioned you can use an oscillate tweener (or maybe a noise tweener for more randomness). If the scene is long and the wave action is slow, take a look to see if there's a speed setting in the shader as well. If not, then the oscillate or noise tweeners are the way to go.

Bagboy

evilproducer said:

Bagboy said:

wendy♥catz said:

I animate the wave or ripples shader natural function in bump or displacement, it has completion, perpetration etc that can be oscillated for continual movement and centre H and V that can be translated for directional movement.

Thanks Wendyluvscats!

I was trying this out and looks promising.

Can the wave loop? Completion goes from 0 to 100 for the waves, but I'm not clear on if that means one cycle, or what.

0 would be at the beginning of the scene and 100 at the end. As Wendy mentioned you can use an oscillate tweener (or maybe a noise tweener for more randomness). If the scene is long and the wave action is slow, take a look to see if there's a speed setting in the shader as well. If not, then the oscillate or noise tweeners are the way to go.

Thanks EP.

I missed Wendy's point on the oscillation. :$

I'll check it out.