Hi Guys
I have a long standing issue with my water being too reflective. When viewed from above I wouldn’t expect the hdri to be reflecting back off the water surface, which has a normal map plugged in.
Everything I try to stop the reflection just makes the water less transparent.
I’m not very good at materials, but someone could help you if you give info about renderengine, material settings…
Everything I try to stop the reflection just makes the water less transparent.
Reflection ← → Transparency aren’t connected or dependent on each other as far as i know ??
First,water has a IOR of around 1.33 this means if you look perpendicular to the water surface,its reflecting around 3% of the light.This is depending on lightdirection and how strong the lightsource is too.
However ,your normalmap makes your surface wavey,so i gets more surface roughness (meshwise) this is the reason you get more diffuse reflections.Vs if you have no meshroughness,then you would get a mirror like lake.
Reflections are the scattering of light of a surface.Transparency or opacity is mostly independent from the reflection(reflection occur only on surface),except from the refractive part. The refraction is the transmitting part into/through the water.
And ofc another exception is scattering and absorption in a volumetric material,due particles etc.
here a math formular how you can calc from ior to principled specular
as you can see for water set specular to 0.25.And try to reduce the strength of your normal map,to reduce the diffuse/wavey reflections,if you want a more mirror like water.
Is the normal pointed the correct way? Blue side up. Does it look better if using ocean modifier with real displacement? Actual waves may cause rays to enter the surface and get lost in the volume, as well as cause other waves behind to be obstructed - these are effects you’ll never get from simply bumping the surface.
I tried adding in the specular but it made no difference.
And having a mirror flat surface for my water is unfortunately not an option.
I ended up using the layer weight facing output as a factor into my mix shader?
could you post your water node setup?
btw the new screen is less reflective
err…what is underneath or how deep is your water?you should place at least a plane with a sand material,if you are in shallow water.
Ok,you dont need 2 principled shader a layer weight and a refraction shader just for water.
One shader is enough,you can use one principled,or one glass shader etc.
volume shader for absorption and scattering is fine to use.
the bump distance and the normal map strength looks to high.they should be under 1,but if your result looks ok who cares,just saying, it could be look strange if you use to high values there.
you have a hdri that has emitting light from every side.If you make a clear water, then the sun reflection from the street emitting light from the under side of the hdri.to avoid that, you need to place a simple plane as lightblocker and ground material under your volumetric object.
your volumetric shader settings looking quite dense though.I can give you the values of real water for absorption if you want.
…edit,here a watersetup with absorption coefficent of clear water,and scatter for typical coast particles.
Thank you, I will definitely try this out.
p.s. I got my water normal map by using Blenders ocean modifier to create 3d topology, and then baked the normal map from that.
Nice idea with the baked ocean modifer,would be nice to see a render with your new settings then.
