…make a REALISTIC river in v2.71 (using Paypal).
One similar to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q1L1B3szwk
OR,
should i just bit the bullet and go buy Vue or maybe Terragen 3?
Much thanks, as i have to have this done by the 25th.
Timothy
Hi. Have you tried the tutorial called “Blender 2.70 Tutorial - Lakeside Trees” by Sardi Pax (on Youtube)? It is similar to the river video you linked to. The lake water is not the same lovely green, but I’m sure you can recolour it to get a good looking river surface. If you try lots of different seed values, I’m sure you can find a nice river valley landscape using the ant plug-in.
The Lakeside trees aren’t quite as attractive as the river ones in that video, but the lakeside ones are quite efficient low-poly assets. And low-poly will pay off in render times. For more realistic trees, perhaps this: “Create Realistic Animated Trees - Beginner Blender Tutorial” by Blender SteVe.
In the video you posted its simply a transparent plane. If this is enough for you its ok. But a good river should have watersim with foam, bracing waves, etc.
Or are you only interested in the surroundings of the video you posted (trees, grass, etc… cause mentioning Vue and Terragen) and the water quality less.
Also, animation or still ?
Sorry i haven’t replied within the past few days; i thought i would get an auto-respond email from BA when someone replied, and haven’t for some reason.
Yes i’ve seen those tutorials already. I also forgot to say i would like the river water moving with small ripples, yet can only find ocean sims and fluid sims (with fluid spilling into a domain container). I’m not to worried about tree creation, but a moving semi-wide river, with precious stones, gold), and fish underneath, is going to be pretty tough. I think i may have found a paid tutor though so that’s good. I appreciate your time and help guys. When i finish i’ll probably post the animation here on BA, but’s it’s going to be awhile i’m sure 
Thanks again…
Timothy
Something like this? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7g32CZIVjk
We did this in 2011… using a very early version of cycles… We moved over from vue, the problem with those programs very quick to get the first 50% of the project going… but getting it finished is extremely hard due to the lack of controls avaliable.
The small ripples are bump/normals… the waves generated by the duck is displacement (baked out of dynamic paint)
Fluid sims in Blender are quite limited but its possible to get a usable result in low-mid scale sims/visualizations. Here is a small animation I did a few years back.
It could be used on a river scene with similar setup.
I’m new to Blender but i think that if you can use
a movie as displacement (and color)map it would be foolish
to mess with particles for this one.
Ah, and i do not like the river in OP’s video.
FYI, you can use dynamic paint to make ripples.