What's the "right" lighting to use with water?

christinac1986_2490617

Hello. Anyone who can give me advice on this I really appreciate anything you can suggest. My dear friend is getting highly skilled in DAZ art. Trouble he is having at the moment is finding the “right” lighting for water in his renders and I’m hoping someone out there can give tips on what you’ve used yourself. Any advice is awesome and thank you

Dartanbeck

This is a rather vague question, as it all depends upon the intended effect. But we gotta start somewhere, right? And a vague question is an excellent way to get an good variety of resulting answers!

Now, for rivers, lakes, oceans, etc., I like to use either a Fake Global Illumination light dome, or the Carrara sunlight... often both.
If I want some extra pop, I'll add a distant light set only to affect the Ocean primitive, or other water feature. I tend to use the Ocean primitive all the time, as it's so easy to animate!
With the distant light set to only affect the water, I rotate it around to glance across the top of the water, nearing 90 degrees. More than 90 will make the light come from underneath, which may be an intended effect as well - perhaps even as another distant light. Normally any terrain would block this light, but since we've set it uo to ONLY affect the water, nothing but the water, and anything parented to it, will be affected.

This added accent light will add a glistening effect to the tops of the waves. Using the brightness control on the light we can set up the power of the effect. Don't be afraid to try out extremes like 300+, just to witness what happens - which can help us to determine which angles work best, as well as the best direction.

As an added note, I prefer to begin my water shaders from those supplied in the Shader tab under the Water heading, and tweaking them from there. Those marked "GI" might be intended for use with global illumination, but that is not necessary for a great looking water!

These are made with a fake GI dome and sunlight, no added light for the water
(they're presets from my EnvironKit - Woodlands for Carrara)

christinac1986_2490617

I appreciate your advice I really do thank you :) See there's no such thing as a stupid question lol :)

evilproducer

Dart gave a good generalized starting point for larger bodies of water. There's also factors to consider such as transparency, and under that heading comes in-scattering, absorption, refraction, fresnel effects, etc. There's also reflection to consider and highlight and shininess. They all work together with your lighting to create the effect. Lighting and shading go hand in hand. What looks great in one scene, may look like crap in another.

ringo monfort

I have always wanted to simulate something like this in Carrrara.

http://www.icebergwatereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Iceberg2-1.jpg

http://teehanlax.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/iceberg-small.jpg

Dartanbeck

RingoMonfort said:

I have always wanted to simulate something like this in Carrrara.

http://www.icebergwatereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Iceberg2-1.jpg

http://teehanlax.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/iceberg-small.jpg

A reasonable challenge! When I can, (if I remember by then, lol) I'll see if I can pull it off :)

WendyLuvsCatz

That iceberg could use the vertex cloud freebie shader if it only worked in C8.5
For some odd reason only 8.1 and below

evilproducer

wendy♥catz said:

That iceberg could use the vertex cloud freebie shader if it only worked in C8.5
For some odd reason only 8.1 and below

Maybe I can give it a shot with that shader. ;-P

ringo monfort

evilproducer said:

wendy♥catz said:

That iceberg could use the vertex cloud freebie shader if it only worked in C8.5
For some odd reason only 8.1 and below

Maybe I can give it a shot with that shader. ;-P

Hi, what is the download link to the shader?

evilproducer

RingoMonfort said:

evilproducer said:

wendy♥catz said:

That iceberg could use the vertex cloud freebie shader if it only worked in C8.5
For some odd reason only 8.1 and below

Maybe I can give it a shot with that shader. ;-P

Hi, what is the download link to the shader?

Hi Ringo,
the shader is actually on a Carrara cumulonimbus vertex cloud model. There have been issues with it rendering in C8.5. I think the issue is possibly that C8.5 handles SSS differently. At least that is what I gathered from the discussion about it. It looks and renders beautifully in C7.2 Pro, and way back when there was the open beta for C8.0 I tried it and it worked as advertised.

Here's the link to the file:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/41244/browse/5/3D-Model/Cumulonimbus-cloud

WendyLuvsCatz

It works fine in C8.1 too just not C8.5

Kixum

I have achieved this water effect but it's not just the shader that's needed to make it work. You need a volumetric effect to get the light to vanish as things get deeper. The best way I've been able to do it is to put a primevol fog object under the surface to fake the light falloff. It really works well.

As for the ice, you need to work on subsurface scattering quite a bit to get that to work out.

Design Acrobat

RingoMonfort said:

I have always wanted to simulate something like this in Carrrara.

http://www.icebergwatereurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Iceberg2-1.jpg

http://teehanlax.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/iceberg-small.jpg

Can probably do it with multi-pass PSD where one uses the "Shadow" or "Reflection" filter duplicate to change it to a desired color. Hopefully, a color in the spectrum of the glacier, sky and the water. :)

ringo monfort

I do have water and water ice shader that help simulate snow or ice.
They are part of the DigitalPainters Shaders Vol. II or The DP Ultimate Shader Bundle set.

http://www.daz3d.com/digitalpainters-shaders-vol-ii

http://www.daz3d.com/dp-ultimate-carrara-bundle

evilproducer

Kixum said:

I have achieved this water effect but it's not just the shader that's needed to make it work. You need a volumetric effect to get the light to vanish as things get deeper. The best way I've been able to do it is to put a primevol fog object under the surface to fake the light falloff. It really works well.

As for the ice, you need to work on subsurface scattering quite a bit to get that to work out.

I've had good luck with the In-scattering and Absorption settings in the transparency channel. They're a good way to simulate light fall-off as well.

pwiecek

If you look up the word "caustics", you may find something interesting.

Headwax

RingoMonfort said:

I do have water and water ice shader that help simulate snow or ice.
They are part of the DigitalPainters Shaders Vol. II or The DP Ultimate Shader Bundle set.

http://www.daz3d.com/digitalpainters-shaders-vol-ii

http://www.daz3d.com/dp-ultimate-carrara-bundle

wow, they look wonderful those renders!

Dartanbeck

head wax said:

RingoMonfort said:

I do have water and water ice shader that help simulate snow or ice.
They are part of the DigitalPainters Shaders Vol. II or The DP Ultimate Shader Bundle set.

http://www.daz3d.com/digitalpainters-shaders-vol-ii

http://www.daz3d.com/dp-ultimate-carrara-bundle

wow, they look wonderful those renders!

Agreed!
Those sets have a lot of Fantastic shaders in them - a very pleasing purchase for a shader-nut, like myself, as there's no better training for new shader ideas than to study those made by expert Carraraists!

If you look up the word "caustics", you may find something interesting.I'll have to do that.
To get Carrara at the time that I did, I bought the book that came with Carrara 6 Pro from DAZ, and upgraded to 7 Pro which fortunately at that time, came with Carrara 8 pro upon its release. The beta for 8 Pro was already really stable at that time, so I never really played with 6 or 7.

But last year I went digging into the Carrara 6 Pro package to try and answer a question or some such, and found a cool Caustics tutorial by Ringo Monfort!

That Ringo... he's always teaching me stuff without my even asking!