i’m just working on a test where i try to recreate an effect that sometimes is clearly visible on a calm sea surface.
The picture below shows what i’m talking about. it is some kind of turbulence on the surface that causes the the water
to reflect differently on some places. I don’t know exactly what causes it, it could be either caused by wind or by water current.
The first thing i had in mind to recreate this effect in a more or less physical way, was to blend two normal maps (with different normal strengh) with a large noice map.
Unfortunately the Bermuda Normal Map do not offer a possibility to adjust the Normal amount, but perhaps such a function could be added.
Or maybe there is some other way, any suggestions?
In a shot I did I obtained the effect with volume select using a noise map (mixed awith a falloff for the far away sea), then adding relax to the selected vertices.
Ahh… OK, i will try it this way, thanks for the tip.
The way Bermuda is set up is that the Normal Map has no options. It simply sets the normals directly from the data provided by the modifier. Really, it’s just a hook into the modifier that provides extra detail, so the modifier is the one doing all the work. However, zemmu’s suggestion is a good one because you can do any modifier-based deformation of the surface in Bermuda. The only thing Bermuda does at the moment is displace everything uniformly.
My original idea to get around this was I added a mode to the modifier where you could specify a texture map rather than a Bermuda node. Using a texture map, you could blend between various ocean surfaces (with the “Bermuda Displacement” map). However, I’m thinking of removing this option because I cannot properly support Normal Maps the way I want to when using the texture map mode. So I would suggest not using that just now, because I might remove it, unless people love it.
Instead, I was thinking of just doing a way to blend between two Bermuda nodes directly in the modifier (based on a vert selection, or map channel). I think it would be more user-friendly. Would it be flexible enough? Thoughts?
@Conrad
for this purpose blending between two bermuda nodes sounds great, then you would be able to blend between two wind values and i think that is what happens in this case.
@ zemmu
I tried the trick you suggested, but unfortunately it hasn’t that effect on the surface that i was searching for, even though i cranked up the relax value to a really high number. (image 1 and 2)
I think that is because this technique affects only the waves generated in the mesh, you can see it if you look carefully at the rendering (Image 2). But the effect that i try to recreate
appers on the smalest waves of a water surface. I found a picture where you can see it more clearly, (Image 3).
Anyway, thanks for the cool tip, i had completly forgotten that you can use a map in a volume selection mod, that will be usefull.
Oh, I guess that makes sense. Most of the displacement you see is probably not vertex-based, but is provided by the Normal Map, so changing the verts with a modifier might not do much in this case.
Apart from the two-node idea, another thing I could try that would be reasonably easy for me to do is to provide an “Additional Bump” texture slot to the “Bermuda Normal Map” (kind of like max’s Normal Bump has). Then you could put in some noise in places on top of the ocean normals. Would you like to give that a try?
sure, it could work.
There is just one thing that might be a little problematic. The trick would work for a still image but how would it look when it is animated?
What i like in Bermuda is that all the Wave animation is done automaticaly based on the wind speed but how the bump map animation will be handled.
it has to move in wind direction at the right speed and the phase animation of the bump also have to be physically correct to make it look belivable.
do you allready have a solution in mind?
I also would like to see this feature. It’s available as “flats” in mentalray ocean(lume) shader (as bump mapping).
Also after generating Bermudamesh, I couldn’t change position on z axis.
For example, I already have camera created but below origin (0,0,-80) but I created mesh by default on origin and I chose that camera. So it generated mesh correct and when I tried to move it down on Z axis, Some polys were getting deleted. So before generating mesh, I had to position bermudamesh below origin and then generate mesh by selecting camera.
Btw, Is mentalray already supported? Coz I did render in mentalray and it worked fine.
So the two things I have for the wish list are: Blending between two Bermuda nodes, and “Additional Bump” sub-texture in the “Bermuda Normal Map”. Agreed that textures put in the ‘additional bump’ might not physically behave like water, but it could be useful for things like raindrop ripples, etc.
Jignesh, you should be able to move the Bermuda mesh along the Z axis. The Bermuda mesh just takes the “z” portion of the object’s transformation and creates a XY plane at that Z height. Have you noticed a bug? I tested it and it seems to behave like I intended on my copy. I created a mesh, and moved it down along the Z axis, and the mesh updated to reflect the change. What was the behaviour you were seeing?
Also, the ocean surface will currently render with mental ray, it’s just that if you use a “Bermuda Normal Map”, mental ray will tell you that it is not supported. A lot of the detail comes in though the Normal Map, so I suggest you use it if you can. Currently I have a partially working version for mental ray. I will upload a new installer once I have completed my latest changes.
Yes, Actually I tried to make Bermuda mesh in already made scene of (river). So My camera was fixed there (Which was below origin) and when I created bermuda mesh it generated right. But when I was trying to move mesh on Z axis. Mesh was getting clipped from bottom plane. So to get the correct position, I had to create Bermuda mesh, on position of river plane I had in the scene and It created it perfectly.
I will look into normal maps. I thought everything comes from Bermuda node (I mean all details and what I see in viewport will render exactly?)
Also I would like to see “variation” parameters for wind. Which will generate strong wind on some portion of mesh and less on some. (maybe it will create that “Flats” effect for ocean waves?)
I look forward to mentalray support.
Thanks,
Regards,
Jigu
Using a mix map with a noise map as mask works perfectly here…
EDIT uhm, quite difficult to control tho’ - also some unpredictable result. First rendering came out lucky, I guess.
Ok, I managed to have an usable result with a blend material (almost same sea material in both slots, one with glossy reflections and bump turned off).
Thing is, there’s no way to control the amount of bump - it acts like a switch, on/off. Having this control would make things way more easy.
(if someone needs the scene, you got to install Brazil r/s Free Rio edition).
nice!
BTW, i’ve tried it your way and for now it works pretty good for me as well. And yes, more bump controll would be really cool, but with the blending BermudaNodes and aditional bump on Conrad’s whishlist this shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
In another post i uploaded an image from superman - we rendered different passes of the water, and adjusted blending in comp with a mask. it worked really well to give those different feels of textures - looked good in motion. this was before we could have all those layers -but i found it was very successful. i wonder if we can assist in some way…conrad?
cb
Doing blending in the comp would work great for still-ocean type shots. I can see that not working as well for stormy oceans though. For example, on a different project we did, “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D” we blended between two types of stormy oceans using a vertex selection. We no longer use that pipeline anymore, but I think we should revive the idea of blending between nodes for the current version of Bermuda.
Jigu, mental ray is now fully supported. Give it a try if you get the chance. You can get the latest build in the downloads section.
Thanks Conard! That’s great! I will do tests on weekend!
I just uploaded a new build of Bermuda. This build includes the ability to blend between “Bermuda Nodes”, so doing this kind of still-water effect should hopefully be easy. I also experimented with it to do fakey shorelines where i’d select a region around the shore, and apply a different type of wave to it. Normal maps got an improvement too.
Next I’ll add the ability to do additional bump maps on top of the normal map (this is not part of the new build).