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aerial view of shallow water?
Hi
I’m trying to find a method to duplicate the look of shallow water when seen from several hundred feet overhead. Almost any Google Image search of, for example, “Bahamas aerial” will illustrate this effect.
The transparency and color of any ‘water’ object would need to change as a function of Y-depth – close to transparent and aqua closer to the shore (leaving the ‘ground’ or ‘sand’ object visible), and nearly opaque with a clockwise hue shift toward more solid blues as the water becomes deeper.
I’ve tried applying Fog to my ‘water’ object with minimal luck. When viewed from the outside, the deeper portions of the Fog can approximate a deep water color, but the shallow areas always seem to have an additive effect on the ‘sand’ object – making it lighter (almost white) at the areas at the shore.
I know that a texture’s Transparency’s Dispersion setting can read an object’s ‘depth’ like this, but I wish there was a way to apply this depth info to transparency and color info as well as dispersion. Is this possible with more advanced scripting maybe?
I’m curious to know if anyone else has encountered or conquered this apparent limitation within C4D. And perhaps I’m just going about it the wrong way at the start. Thanks in advance for any insight or commiseration!
Mike Gottschalk
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4 Replies
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Thanks Adam!
Although I could open the file, I’m running R10.5 so I may be missing some of the full functionality of the scene.
The overall look is very convincing, and I found the ‘green to blue’ gradient in the fresnel shader, but it seems that this gradient is a function of light and shadow rather than a function of water depth.
I’ll still mess around with it, though. And again, maybe I’m missing something viewing it in R10.5. Thanks for the help!
I spoke with a co-worker today and he suggested applying the color gradient to the ‘ground’ object itself (UV-mapped as a function of depth) rather than applying it to the ‘water’ object. So maybe this is a work-around solution to the issue.
I’ll keep trying. And thanks for the help!
-Mike
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Hi Mike,
R11’s transparency channel has an absorption component that isn’t in R10+. That was actually the basis of the effect in the file I put together.
Coloring the ground is actually a good workaround. I would use a 3D linear gradient set to work in the Y direction:
https://www.3danvil.com/tutorials/tropical_absorption_0001.c4dYou can use variations of the gradient in the alpha channel to overlay different materials on the surface, under water ground, and coast (foam).
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I’ve been trying to figure this out. Thank you for posting and sharing!
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