Water ripples?

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djembeplay

Well-known member
Does anyone know how to create realistic water ripples?

For example, lets say there is someone wading through a pond. With each step, his legs would push corresponding ripples in various directions.

For another example: I just watched the beginning of "Horton Hears a Who" and the elephant in the beginning is playing in the water, creating realistic ripples. Is this meticulously hand-animated, or are we peons once again outclassed by those with enough money to buy every high-tech tool available?

I know about RealFlow... if that is how people usually make ripples and splashes, is there any other way?

C4D user here (as the ones who will probably respond to this already know).
 
I love Horton Hears a Who. It's a short movie but one of my favs.

You could try the Ripple Shader. It's found in the Texture->Effects->Ripple Shader.

Splashes you might have a bit of trouble with. You could try the RF demo as well. I heard it has a limit of 50K particles but that might be okay for little splashes. Learning how to get good meshes is the main thing.
 
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Hey Raptor, long time no talk.

The ripple shader isn't interactive though, is it? In other words, it just creates fading circles that widen with some parameters to adjust, right?

So it sounds like besides realflow, basically the only other option is to model splashes and ripples manually...?

I sort of like that idea, actually... like you have to work to earn your final result. That's where truly unique art work comes from, after all...

I feel like... after climbing the seemingly never ending learning curve of 3D for about a year and a half... I'm finally arriving at the conclusion that you really only need basic shaping and texturing tools to do everything... all else is sort of like 'extras' in the tool belt to help you get things done quicker / easier. But... this can work against you as well, in the sense of originality / creativity. It's all a balance... finding what you are comfortable with and running with it.

It actually seems sort of frivolous to try to learn every little aspect of a program like C4D. If there isn't a practical application of these studies... it just remains in the 'mental / theory' realm... When you actually go to manifest your art, you may find that you don't even need half the things you toiled over trying to memorize and perfect... and you may also find that there are things you need to learn that just simply cannot be taught; new discoveries that correlate specifically to your own ways of understanding and working.

^^^ a tendency to drift into tangents, yes...
 
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Here's a tutorial on how to do ripples with the proximal shader in the displacement channel. It's an old tutorial so the screenshots will be different, but you can still figure it out. When they say "BhodiNUT Proximal shader" that's now under the "Effects" of the shader fly out menu.

As for understanding/learning all of a 3D program, obviously it takes many years to learn every aspect of a 3D software, or any software for that matter, but that learning isn't all for naught as you imply. The more tools you understand the more options you will have available to you for solving problems. It's a mix of knowing and using that knowledge to creatively solve problems.
 
Thanks for the tutorial.

I didn't mean to say that learning new aspects of 3D is useless in general. I just mean... unless things learned indeed do fit into the way an individual works, then it seems frivolous. So, I think its better to just start working, then when you run into something that you are having a little trouble with, study and learn what you need to know, then keep working.

The opposite of this would be studying everything in a book attempting to memorize it, with the thought that someday you will use it when you are working. But you may or may not use something at all when it comes down to it... plus its much harder to transfer 'theoretical' knowledge to 'practical' knowledge as opposed to learning something in the process of immediately applying it to your work.

Just some thoughts...
 
Hey djembeplay I don't have any other advice that hasn't been said already but good luck. It seems like a hard effect to pull off semi-realistically.
 
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