Tutorial 5: Sea Reflection & Refraction

In this tutorial you will take the knowledge you gained from building a Sea Surface, and you will see how quickly and easily you can add reflections and refraction to your water. You'll also learn about DreamScape's SubSurface atmospheric, and how it can help you add realism to your scenes where you have objects submerged within your water.

 

In 3ds Max, select File->Open, and from your \Scenes\DreamScape\Tutorials folder, select the Tut5-start.max file.

 

 

This file contains a camera, a DreamScape Sun light, a DreamScape Sea Surface primitive and other standard 3ds Max primitives.

 

Open the Material Editor, click on the Get Material button and double-click on the DreamScape: SeaMaterial from the Material/Map Browser window, then close the Material/Map Browser window.

 

 

Drag and drop the SeaMaterial onto the SeaSurface01 object in any viewport.

Within the DreamScape Sea Parameters rollout, make sure that the Reflect Objects and Refract Objects checkboxes are active.

 

Basically that's all you need to do in order the get reflections and refraction out of your water surface. You do have the option of picking the Index of Refraction (IOR), but otherwise, it's a simple task to add these attributes to the Sea Surface.

 

Next we'll add a quick DreamScape Sky before we do a test render.

 

Go to the Rendering->Environment menu, then from the Atmosphere rollout click Add.

From the Add Atmospheric Effect dialog choose the DreamScape entry then click OK to add it to the Effects list.

Inside the Daylight Control rollout turn on the Render Daylight checkbox so that DreamScape will calculate its own version of global illumination.

 

 

Select the Sun01 light source in your scene and from the Modify panel go to the Shadow Parameters rollout and activate the Geometry->Geometry and Antialias checkboxes.

Activate the Camera01 viewport and render the scene.

 

 

There are a couple of problems as you can probably tell. Beyond the black gap between the water and the sky, you should also notice that the underwater part of the pyramid is all white (making it difficult to see), when in fact it should be fading into the blue color of the water as it gets deeper.

 

Fortunately, DreamScape does provide you with a way to create this effect.

 

Go to the Rendering->Environment menu, then from the Atmosphere rollout click Add.

From the Add Atmospheric Effect dialog choose the DreamScape:SubSurface entry then click OK to add it to the Effects list.

 

 

Within the SubSurface controls, set the Max. Step Size spinner to 2, then set the Density spinner to 10.

 

 

Density controls how muddy or murky the water is (how fast objects beneath the surface disappear) and how refined the blending is from full visibility to no visibility. In cases where you see banding within the SubSurface, reduce the Max. Step Size spinner.

 

Back inside the Material Editor, within the Underwater Color group of controls, activate the Use SubSurface checkbox.

 

 

This will force the Sea Surface to calculate the murkiness beneath the surface based on the SubSurface properties.

 

Now, re-render the scene. When you do, you'll see that the water surface tints the white pyramid geometry that projects below the surface.

 

 

At this point, you can go back into the Sea Surface mesh and change the grid from a Simple Mesh to the Adaptive Mesh and extend the water surface out so that it meets the skyline (as you did in the previous tutorial).

 

In the next tutorial, you'll get your first crack at land! DreamScape's Terra module is a powerful procedural land creation tool set gives you the ability to generate massive land forms without ever having to create a single polygon.