Max-Realms | 3ds Max Community - Tutorials (Folder)

- Ray water

Tutorial written by Tom.Klejne for http://www.3dspline.com. (For any questions, feel free to contact me)

1. In the top viewport create

a box, the size of the box does not matter as long as its big enough to see the details, and name it "water" or any name that suits you. (Note: you can create a patch grid, nurbs surface or just about anything since this is basically just material editing).

2. Add a camera or just adjust the perspective to a good view of the water.

3. In the top viewport create a couple of primitives and move then so that they are half way inside the water, and make sure you can see them in the perspective or camera view.

4. Click on the material editor button , In any default material slot change the diffuse color to the color of water. I used a navy blue, red:68 green:49 blue:139.

5. Still in the material editor open the maps rollout, click on the reflection map, then select raytrace from the list of new maps. Click on the go to parent icon to return the the main material. In the maps rollout change the reflection amount to 30. Apply the material to "water" and render. It should look something like this...

This does not look very realistic... Therefore we will create some waves to distort the reflection and add some realism.

6. go back to the material editor and open the maps rollout, click the bump map and select noise from the list of new materials, leave everything as default except this... open the noise parameters rollout and change the size until it looks like waves. I used 45 but it can be different For every scene so you will have to play around with it a bit.

7. Click the go to parent icon , apply the material to "water" and render the scene again. Your image should look something like this...

This looks a little more realistic, even with no light effects. This concludes the tutorial For creating raytraced water. But you should go beyond this point, try changing opacity For the water, add a sandy bottom, or just add a background some lights and a more complex object as I did.. (Note: I used the same settings of the water as I showed you in this tutorial, the reflection from the background and light from a low angle made it look total different :)