Learn how to create realistic water in Cycles including effects like caustics.
Luca Scheller writes:
Hi guys,
here is a small tutorial series I created on how to create a Water Uber Shader for the Cycles render engine. The series is made up of 3 parts:
- We’ll create the water shader. (The shader is made up of 4 parts: 1. Refr/Refl base shader 2. Fake/Realistic absorption shaders 3. Fake caustics shader 4. Foam shader. By the way: the new pointiness attribute allows us to create cool looking fake caustics.)
- Then we’ll create a shader group node for our objects in the water (This allows our objects to fade into the water based on how deep they are below the surface/how far the camera is away from the water surface.)
- The last part will be about creating a small python script with which we can add our group node from part 2 to our “in the water” objects. This way you can skip the tedious step of adding the group node manually to all your “in the water” objects, so that you can instead focus on calibrating your shader.
Intro:
Water Uber Shader Tutorial Series Playlist:
