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Does anyone have good material for water? (hot4d)
 
I got Hot4d to work with S24 (I assume the tutorial also works for 25 and 26, but I can send anyone my working plugin if they want), and I am trying to get a good water material.
Does anyone have good tips?
I am using only reflection and subsurface and bump right now. I know it can look better.

I am also unsure exactly how the subsurface values work. Are the weights of each layer combined to total 1 or can each weight also be 1?
And I am not sure what the radius means for each layer.
Edited: ssjenforcer - May 9, 2022 16:24
 
This is updated, using a normal map and noise for the bump.
I tried changing the subsurface radius scale and some of the radius values.
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
May 9, 2022 17:51
Hi ssjenforcer,
Why do you use subsurface for water? It's more needed for organic surfaces like skin, wax, cheese or fruits/vegetables. The radiuses of SSS layers tell how deep the light can enter under the surface with certain color and weight. The colors and weights of layers are renormalized if you use large values of weights (in case their sum exceed 1).

But returning to water you should use reflection + refraction with the same IOR, e.g. IOR = 1.4. Also for sea water you can use Absorption layer of material where you can make some dark blue color of absorption and a radius that tells at what distance the light will turn to absorption color. Just make experiments.
Also it can be possible to combine with translucent + absorption layer potentially using mix material with another material that holds this just to make the peaks of waves with some white effect for foam.
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Quote
Kirgman wrote:
Hi ssjenforcer ,
Why do you use subsurface for water? It's more needed for organic surfaces like skin, wax, cheese or fruits/vegetables. The radiuses of SSS layers tell how deep the light can enter under the surface with certain color and weight. The colors and weights of layers are renormalized if you use large values of weights (in case their sum exceed 1).

But returning to water you should use reflection + refraction with the same IOR, e.g. IOR = 1.4. Also for sea water you can use Absorption layer of material where you can make some dark blue color of absorption and a radius that tells at what distance the light will turn to absorption color. Just make experiments.
Also it can be possible to combine with translucent + absorption layer potentially using mix material with another material that holds this just to make the peaks of waves with some white effect for foam.
The tutorial I watched used SSS, which I thought made sense.
But where is absorption layer in centileo?
Are you referring to absorption in the transmission channel?
I also tried using transmission set to 0.3
but you suggest translucent instead?

This is my new attempt. The second image is with the normal map scaled down to 0.1
Edited: ssjenforcer - May 9, 2022 18:42
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
May 9, 2022 18:45
Just start with Absorption changes to some darker blue with radius changes and leave Transmission basic color as white
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Quote
Kirgman wrote:
Just start with Absorption changes to some darker blue with radius changes and leave Transmission basic color as white
When I darken the Absorption blue colour in Transmission channel it makes the water appear grey and not blue.
What do you mean radius changes? Which channel? I thought only subsurface has radius. Unless you mean the distance scale?
I had turned off subsurface and just used transmission absorption to get the blue colour.

When I reduce the HSV v value I get the grey look. But if I reduce the h value I get this nice light blue near the rocks.
I also just turned on ls liquid (not in these screenshots). That helps for materials for liquids?
Edited: ssjenforcer - May 9, 2022 19:40
 
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
May 9, 2022 21:19
This disctance scale doesn't scan the actual geometry extents. This distance setting just controls how the light attenuates while travelling the distance inside the water medium.
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
@ssjenforcer,
Try an HDRI sky with clear blue sky with a sun and small amount of clouds. I don't think you will get a nice reflection with the current hdri.
Also add a sea bed with sand material, 2-5m deep if you are after shallow sea water look.
 
You can try adjusting your shader as physically accurate as possible, but you have to adjust your scene also. Otherwise try artistic way (like the game engine) it will be faster and visually appealing but less accurate.

This one is a quick setup using a plane with noise displacement.
I used a landscape object as sea bed, added a diffuse material as sand.
Water is just a plane with 100x100 subdivision, used displacer deformer with animated noise.
A clear blue sky with visible sun is used as the hdri ( if I change to other hdri, the result will be different).

For the ocean material I used diffuse+reflection+refraction(transmission) technique. Also added a noise texture as bump.
Diffuse color is a bright turquoise blue.
Reflection is default but adjusted the IOR and roughness value.
Transmission value is doing the magic here.
Use the value between 0.9-.98.
Adjust the absorption color (any blue color) and distance value.

Not the best technique, but will work with any other renders also.
 
Quote
thrimanakatha wrote:
You can try adjusting your shader as physically accurate as possible, but you have to adjust your scene also. Otherwise try artistic way (like the game engine) it will be faster and visually appealing but less accurate.

This one is a quick setup using a plane with noise displacement.
I used a landscape object as sea bed, added a diffuse material as sand.
Water is just a plane with 100x100 subdivision, used displacer deformer with animated noise.
A clear blue sky with visible sun is used as the hdri ( if I change to other hdri, the result will be different).

For the ocean material I used diffuse+reflection+refraction(transmission) technique. Also added a noise texture as bump.
Diffuse color is a bright turquoise blue.
Reflection is default but adjusted the IOR and roughness value.
Transmission value is doing the magic here.
Use the value between 0.9-.98.
Adjust the absorption color (any blue color) and distance value.

Not the best technique, but will work with any other renders also.

Which value is 0.9-0.98?

I tried using diffuse again instead of transmission absorption for colour, and I kind of like it better now. And my normal map reduced scale I think gives more detail in the third image.
 
Did you mean transmission roughness?
If I increase that above 0 then I cannot see the figure objects below the water surface.
 
Also, do you use ls liquid enabled?
When I try it it doesn't look quite as good. I'm not too sure what that feature does or what to change if it is enabled.
The reflections don't look as good as before.
Edited: ssjenforcer - May 11, 2022 00:22
 
Sorry for the confusion, here is my material setup,


Quote
Which value is 0.9-0.98?
This value goes to transmission weight. If you need less transparent water keep the value to 0.9 and increase if need transparency.
You won't get exact same look until you change the hdri.


Different HDRi different reflection color.
 


Adjusting the diffuse color, transmission weight, absorption color, depth values can change the scene drastically. You can achieve the ocean look without diffuse turned on. Getting the nice contact color is achieved through the diffuse color.
 
Also I assume that you are using the second reflection for foam effect. Try adding the same bump map filtered through a gradient texture to the second reflection weight. Adjusting the gradient slot you can get better foam.

foam created using noise texture(same as bump map)


same setup wide angle


adjusted the foam effect by gradient
 


This setup uses no diffuse.

without diffuse color


with diffuse color

For close up shots, the bump scale need to be adjusted.
 
Administrator  Posts: 895
May 11, 2022 11:44
Nice attempts btw :)
Actually you may build the bump map based on Layer shader node with several layers of differernt Noises each of them with different granularity for zoom in / out
Also displacement map can be usefull here as well
CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat
 
Thanks for the tips. I will try some of them.
I haven't tried foam yet, but there is a 5 part tutorial for hot4d where he shows how to use thinking particles (or some other particle) and pyrocluster to make foam.

do you use Ls liquid?
Maybe if I try more noise detail it will help, but it didn't make it look better when I enabled it before.
 
No liquid turned on.
as i said b4, change hdr map.
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