Transparent water work arround

[cyphyr]

<edit>Just noticed Moodflow had already sused this technique</edit>

Well I thought I would take a break from my canyon project and have a go at some thing thats been a problem for a while now. I don't know if this has been posted before, my apologies if it has.

Transparent Water ~ The solution (well maybe lol)

Make two renders, one with the water and one without.

Open both in Photoshop and copy the water render over the bare render.
Mask out the water and delete the "shore line" in your upper layer.
Apply a layer mask to the selection in your upper layer and fill with a gradient black to white gradient.
Thats pretty much it, the water is now more transparent where the mask is darker and more opaque where it is lighter.

The two wavey examples below also used a greyscale copy of the water layer to further mask the alpha so that water more perpendicular to the viewer was also more transparent.

As a further step you can use the same selection to apply a slight ripple/distortion to the surface below the water.

I'm sure that this technique could be adapted to more complex environments, possibly with the use of a z depth layer as well

Richard

[moodflow]

Very nice work!

Yes, this is the exact same technique I used, but I added a few extra steps to try to simulate SSS, depth blur, and transparency color.  Thats the only difference.

[RealUser]

And if you add some caustics, it would look really great.

[sjefen]

Looks great.

[dhavalmistry]

is there a workaround for transparent water effect without taking the render to photoshop???

[Volker Harun]

Yes.

[rcallicotte]

Volker...and it is shown...where?

[Volker Harun]

@Calico: It is rendering. And it is tweaky.

[dhavalmistry]

care explaining the concept Volker??....please

[Volker Harun]

I attached a scene file, as the function isn't a standalone thing.

It gets some colour information from the fractal terrain and calculates the height-difference of it and the water-plane.

This information is used to create a 'depth'-sensitive blending shader for the water-shader.

It is very tricky to get the right balance for the colours of the fractal terrain. It is almost impossible to get correct values when using more than one terrain.
The calculated mask is only correct when rendering from bird's eye perspective (90° downwards) - it will be more incorrect, the lower the camera's angle is.
There is no distance-shader included (necessary?) nor refraction.

One first render gives the information for the surface under the water's disc object - and is used as an image-shader through camera. I rendered it at 0.3 quality for the refracted look.

So, it works, but it is not really versatile or perfect.

Volker

[Volker Harun]

Forgot to include the rendered scene ...
it needs some work ... just the first day's results.

In fact, it looks a bit like strong surf, doesn't it?

[Volker Harun]

Wanted to upload another, a better PoV.

And last, not least to credit Andy Welder who made in my opinion the first steps in shading water and inspired me a lot!

Volker

[moodflow]

Amazingly creative use of nodes to generate this effect.  5 stars from me!   

I wonder if there is a way to add a color effect, the deeper the water is?  This would simulate transparency (water) color.

[Volker Harun]

Yes, this should be possible - I could do this tomorrow.

[moodflow]

Working on it right now.  Just trying to dial in the transparency, though its looking great already.

EDIT:  I somehow mesed up the view and the effect is no longer working.  So I am looking into why.   Very fun!  Thanks Volker.