Reading and printing out the second page helps too. :blushing: :blushing: :blushing:

ok. Bookmarked lol

DrMCClark:

Strangely, I didn't get an ebot from your post - good thing you PM'd me.

Forgive the dumb question, but you do have ray tracing turned on in render options, right? The refraction and reflection nodes only come with ray tracing.

Also make sure the sand extends way out under the water. Otherwise, what you see through the water will be your sky dome, which is blue. (Or maybe not, I see some big white area in the upper right. What is that?

Failing that, what exactly are you using for the water geometry? The reason I ask is that the curved edge makes me think its a custom object you made. Are you sure the object vertices have proper UV coordinates? If you just model some shape but don't UV map it, it has the same UV coordinates at every point, which means the U or V nodes won't produce any variation. To test this, make a new material for the water. Turn off diffuse, specular, everything. Now connect a V_Texture_Coordinate to the Ambient_Color input and set Ambient_Value to 1. Render. Your water object should have a smooth, black-to-white gradient from one edge to the other. If its all gray or white or black, whatever shade, but just one shade everywhere, then the problem is you don't have any texture coordinates on the geometry.

If the refraction and UV coordinates are working, then I may be seeing another problem. I can see a shadow under the more distant parts of the water, where it curves a lot. (You'll need to fix that by lowering the water) But meanwhile, because I can see "under" the water, I can see that the shadow is very blue-green. So your sand surface under the water is going to give the refraction a blue-green tint anyway.  Try changing the sand to white, at least to see if that's the problem. You'll notice in my render that the sand was much lighter. If the sand is already dark aqua, then the entire surface will be aqua.

Let me know what you find after answering these questions. If none of these fixes it, we can work on it some more, but I'll need more information.

By the way, good catch. I noticed you fixed a bug in my material. I accidentally deleted the connection to the reflection_Value input. You figured it out on your own. My mistake would cause the foam to be reflective as well, which is obviously not desirable :) 

Yes, raytracing is on, 3 bounces, 3 pixel samples

I thought the big white thing in the upper white was the foam, but by the way you're asking, I'm apparently mistaken.

I used a 1 Macro Circle from RNDA's Microcosm.  But as you suggest, it looks like crap.  Behold!  My beach is now an oil slick!

PS Anybody else having problems with Firefox and this new message interface?  I had to use (shudder) IE to reply

Another thing I'm runing into it the "corn row" effect of stretching the X-scale so much.  I had adjusted the cellular node's x-factor to account, but as you can see, it's not quite right.... Ideas?

Attached Link: Thread for dealing with textures that are obviously repeating.

First, switch the Noise_Type on the Cellular node to "Improved". This will get rid of SOME of the row patterning.

Then read the linked thread. That was how I dealt with a repeating tile texture that was obviously repeating into the distance.

You can use fBm, Fractal_Sum, Turbulence, any of those can distort the pattern. However, be careful - I've been testing them today on these large surfaces and they ALL contain the corn row pattern within them. Obviously, Poser's random number generator completely sucks.

So distorting one with another may just not work well here.

Sigh.

I've been playing around with ways to disrupt the corn rows, no dice either... I guess I'll have to push the camera closer and around a bit.  (I've been meaning to get a better handle on camera intricacies anyways.)  It's not the angle I was looking for, but this won't be the first time my artistic vision is foiled by the whimsies of Poser ;-p

(At the risk of sounding greedy, any luck with the water?)

Hmmm... Just thinking. But how might it turn out if you change the focal length of the camera in P6? Perhaps adding blur to distant objects with say, a 25-35mm lens would help camoflage the cornrows? bB

Great minds think alike ;)  In fact, I'm experimenting with depth of field on my previous render.  I'm using 50mm and an f-stop of 22 on it (because the 2 characters are about 200" apart) on it and it's looking good so far.   I'll probably post it as a "redux" to show how it adds to the image.

The downside is that this is really kicking up render time.  I had to crank up pixel sampling to 15 to keep the out-of-focus parts from looking grainy.  Still, bB, I think it'll be a way to hide the rows.

^^ Perhaps you can render the backgrpound alone, render the figures later, then composite them together in photoshop or, load the rendered background as a background picture in Poser and select "render over background picture." How's that? bB

I've let renders go overnight, if not longer.  The first image in my gallery took 23 hours because I'd turned on AO and had a mirror, which just drove Firefly nuts.  Still I was very pleased with how that came out, so I don't mind letting this one run its course.  (Work's been a bitch lately anyways, so it's not I've got a ton of time to play with Poser... not like some people I know who can play with Poser at work ;-)

What driving me nuts, though, P6's fool memory limit.  I had to dump a bunch of stuff from it because it ate up too much memory, even with smaller buckets and smaller/fewer textures. 

At work??? =o I have trouble with renders too. I tend to render in layers, but it still takes too long. :( bB

Well, hopefully my patience will pay off.  I'll let you know when the redux is done & posted.  I'm still contemplating how to get bagginsbill's spiffy water texture to play nice with me. 

I've about got it where I like, but as you can see, it's still not quite right.  Instead of the "white foam edge/", I'm getting black or some crazy dark color.  The problem is that the water plane intersects into the sand (to give it that curved edge) and I assume the raytrace bias of refract node is the cause, but I don't know how to fix it.

Also, the sand's poking through a bit.  I'm going to try adding a u_texture node to better control the height of the sand's cellular.  Better suggestions are welcomed. ;-)

I added a pow function (set pretty high) to scrunch up the blend across the larger water plane.  I also tied it to the fbm node so the foam would fade as it went out.  I might create a separate node with an even higher pow value to more finely control the foam.

thanks Bagginsbill, this has been a big help, thanks

Thanks so much bagginsbill

Wow really great,

Rowlando

I've tried, twice, to build this shader using the jpeg, but neither time did I get anything like a reasonable effect. Maybe I'm missing a connection, or it might be because I'm applying it to an existing water prop. If anyone has a version as a material file, can you send me site mail so that I can give you my email to send it directly?
thanks
AnAardvark

Quote - Ok now for the complicated one. This is the water and foam for the hi-res square.

In the upper right is the fBm and math function to generate the foam structure. This is passed through a math function only so I can easily turn it off without disconnecting it. I just set the math value to 0. The fBm produces white where I want foam. This is fed to the diffuse_value, so where there is no foam, the square produces no diffuse light.

To the left of the fBm is a math function which "inverts" the foam map. This becomes my clear water map. In other words, where the water is clear, this is white. Where the foam is, this is black. I feed this to the specular value, because I don't want specular reflections on the foam - just the water. I also feed this to the reflection and refraction values. Again, I only want those effects on the water, not the foam.

The reflect node is straightforward. You can adjust the value (.2) up or down to suit your taste. Don't make it too high or the water won't look real.

I've done a coupld tricks on the refract node. First, I set the softness to .5 - this makes the water a little murky. You can set it to 0 for crystal clear water. But surf always has some sand and bubbles in it and this takes care of it. Second, I set the RayBias to 1 inch. This means that any object within an inch of the surface will not be "seen" by the refraction. Or something like that. Anyway, it is this value that makes the edge of the water look white where it comes in close contact with the sand. I set the Refract background color to white and this makes the nice foamy edge on the water. Pretty cool, huh? Its actually a bug that I turned into a feature.

The v texture coordinate of the square drives the blender which chooses what color to tint the water. I used aqua and very light gray. Play with other colors here. Please realize, this is a trick and I have carefully contrived my scene to let this work. If the camera was seeing a curve around the water, it won't look right. I think of ways to deal with that, but for now, just make the sand-water interface roughly aligned with the X axis and all will be copacetic.

Finally, the Displacement is a combination of a Fractal_Sum and the Foam. You can try other functions instead of Fractal_Sum, like Turbulence, Waves, Spots, etc. Lots of different effects are possible.

To get good specular glints off the water, you need to either have some pretty violent displacement or, as I have done in my picture, put the sun back enough so it shines somewhat towards the camera.

This is a shader I wouldn't publish now - it has all kinds of things wrong with it. Be that as it may, what are the results you're getting.

You mentioned using a water prop. What sort of results are you getting? 

Did you try your copy of the shader on a one-sided square? If if works right on the square, then the shader is fine, and it's a difference in the prop.

First does it work on a square for you?

Then I have more questions.

Quote - This is a shader I wouldn't publish now - it has all kinds of things wrong with it. Be that as it may, what are the results you're getting.

You mentioned using a water prop. What sort of results are you getting? 

Did you try your copy of the shader on a one-sided square? If if works right on the square, then the shader is fine, and it's a difference in the prop.

First does it work on a square for you?

Then I have more questions.

I'll get back to you next week when I get back from vacation.

Using the high-res square worked perfectly.

OK Then most likely there is a UV mapping problems. The color gradient of this shader is driven by the value of the V coordinate of each point.

Is your water prop UV mapped?

Quote - OK Then most likely there is a UV mapping problems. The color gradient of this shader is driven by the value of the V coordinate of each point.

Is your water prop UV mapped?

I'll find out in about a week when my computer gets back from being repaired. (The good news is I have a recent backup, the bad news is that I might need it.)

Take your time. I'll be here :-)