Reflections on sea surface..

[Mike Clasby]

If the camera was locked down things would be much simpler.

You can get reflections a couple of ways, either way you’d need to Dup the layer, then mask off/key out the skyline the skyline to get a reflection of just the part you want:

then get reflection by:

1) Disconnect the x and y scale by clicking on that little knot (looks like an “infinity” symbol) next to Scale (S) then chagrining the y scale to -100. This is what Andrew does in his tut, Create 3D Reflections. Click his head an scroll down.

or

2) Dup the layer, mask/key the skyline, then Distort>Corner Pin and pull the 4 little squares (corners)around until you get the reflection you want (the upper ones get pulled down, the lower ones up, kinda flip them, you’ll see).

Drop the Opacity on either method to 30% or whatever looks good.

If you want the reflection to ripple, use a dup of the water (Dup, Mask then precompose?) as a Displacement Map in Distort>Displacement Map. See Aharon’s tut for what needs to be known about Displacement Mapping (the precomping can get a little tricky, so precomp when needed). Click Aharon’s head (he’s hiding under the Ranger hat, has anyone ever seen his eyes?), scroll for the three part tut(s). The Basics-Part 1, Avoiding the Pitfalls: Part 2…

Anyway it all depends on the shot and how accurate you want to get. You’ll need to move masks and corner pins if there’s a lot of change of perspective, but maybe you can cheat a bit since it’s a water flyover. Hopefully someone else has a simpler solution. Goodluck.

[Reloaded]

Just watch Andrew Cramer tutorial about reflections &page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/reflections/index.html” target=”_blank”>https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/reflections/index.html
Ok, now you are ready to go further, by using Andrew Cramer instructions create the city reflection, but there is no need to make it 3D or to use corner pin (maybe you’ll need to track the image because of the camera movement), now just set the transfer mode to “Overlay” play with the opacity to get the result you wish.

Now precompose it, and apply “Displacement map” using the original image as displacement so the reflections get the shape of the waves on the water (if there are waves).

I hope it helps.