Let There be Water

So as the group has moved on to starting bits of animation, I have applied the various water techniques that I have learnt about (and blogged) in the first part of the animation. After looking at the water, I wanted to try and create my own material that replicates water. I found an easy to follow tutorial on YouTube (this can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB5K5_PPczI) to create it. I followed the basic steps from the tutorial. This involved going into the material editor, selecting the slot and changing the shader basic parameter to Anisotropic. I then adjusted the colours to ones that I felt would replicate the colours of the ocean, I then put the specular level up to 200 and put the glossiness up to 50. Going into the maps section of the material, I add bump, reflection and refraction. I then added a map to each of them (noise for bump, falloff for reflection and raytrace for refraction). I then followed the video more closely and changed the martial type from standard to top and bottom. I then went into the bottom half of the material and changed the colour to light blue, from then I went back to the parent and blended the top and bottom materials together.

Water like material in material editor

Water on map scene

Rendered water