Animated water texture

Support Materials and Textures
1

Can someone point me in the right direction to create water like the pool in this video:

it looks to me like it is just an animated texture. seems like it should be simple but I can’t seem to find any tutorials or info to get me started. oh and this is not for the blender game engine.

Thanks

KW

2

For cycles you probably could try something like this and animate mapping and texture size values.
Btw nice rendering details in that yt comment…

pool.png604×785 525 KB

3

eppo - that looks great, but I guess I should have mentioned this is for blender internal. I am also looking for something simple and fast rendering. I played around with a marble texture influencing the normals and got this:

http://i.imgur.com/qavAG.jpg

not bad for simple water?

4

Try this link to a tutorial to create water in Blender using animated normal maps. This technique was used in making the effects for the Blender open project game “Yo Frankie!”

I know you don’t want to make water for the BGE but this technique could work for animation as well. If its difficult for you to follow this tutorial made in 2.49, I will make an updated version in 2.6. Hope that helps :slight_smile:

5

Dynamic Paint can do pretty good water effects. Not sure if it’s what you’re looking for, but little tutorial/demo thing below shows what it does and how it works. Water effect is towards the end.

6

fpsgod17 - you got me going in the right direction. after watching the video I was still not sure how I would use an animated normal map outside of the BGE, then it struck me that I did not need an animated normal map. I simply used two cloud textures on the plane influencing the normals, then animated them in the same manner you did using the texture offset. works great!

xrg - I think any simulation is too much for my current project (already at 3 million poly), but I watched the tut and will probably use it in a future animation, really cool stuff.

Thanks for all the help!

KW

7

Glad you figured it out and happy to help! The way you described using it was what I had in mind when I first saw your post, I just wanted to point you in the right direction and it seemed to have helped so that’s good

8

ok one last question or maybe statement. since using a texture too affect normals is just changing the shading on the object, if another object is casting a shadow on it then the effect is ruined. that seems to be the case in my experiments and my guess is there is no way around that. if there are no replies I will just assume that is a correct statement :stuck_out_tongue:

9

The water in that video looks a lot like Blender’s ocean modifier:

10

Here’s another way to do it. Go the this site, http://www.yofrankie.org/tutorial-animated-normal-maps/, and follow the tutorial up to the point where he has you render out the normal maps. You won’t need to make the full image since this won’t be an animated normal map like the ones used in the game engine. All you need is the 100 snapshots that step one of the tutorial gives you. Now do the following:

  1.  Set up a new scene and add a plane 

  2.  Give the plane a material and give the material a texture

  3.  In the texture type choose Image or Movie

  4.  Navigate to the file where the 100 images you made from the tut are and choose the one called 0001 (not surprisingly it should be the first one)

  5.  Click the Auto Refresh and Cyclic checkboxes

  6.  Change source to "Image Sequence"

  7.  Under  Image Sampling check the Normal Map box and set it to tangent

  8.  Under Influence uncheck Color in Diffuse and check Norm in Geometry

In responce to kwr426 a mapped object will still react to lighting. Try the above technique and, while the animation is playing, move the light around and you’ll see that the shadowing reacts to it.