Render realistic flowing water?

[Salm]

Hey all, this is my first post here but absolutely loving keyshot!

Anyway i am in the process of attempting to model flowing water for a tap i designed. I don't really have lots of experience with bump maps and textures so a little out of my depth but i followed the below tutorial.

http://www.keyshot.com/how-to-render-water-in-keyshot-and-easily-create-bump-maps-in-after-effects/2012/

I have attached a image of my result below


Its a okresult but not entirely what i am looking for.

I am designing a waterfall style tap so i need the water to look like its flowing, does anyone have some advise how i should go about achieving this?

[edwardo]

Hello salm, thought i would attach a few tests of a similar nature I did in about 5 minits.

The best advise i could give is to model the flow of water as much as possible (which is simpler than you might think) rather than relying on bump maps.

I'v attached a rhino file which is basically a loft between several slighty different shaped 'rings' to get the main water flow. Iv converted it to a obj as well, but you wont be able to see the cross sections that were lofted from the obj file.

2 images: one with a bump map applied, one without. I have attached that normal map as well.

Tip: keep the bump map height way down... very subtle!

You will find that things become far more photo-real with a backplate image as keyshot refracts the image amazingly well.

Thereafter I think you could achieve realism in post production by adding a little directional blur, a few splashes and drops here and there. (i didnt do any post production on the images attached.

Hope this helps a bit

[Salm]

Thanks for the tips man, p.s like the little crocodile you added in there haha. I gave it a try and sadly i could get mine quite as subtle as yours without it looking to much like water but here are my results. I Have some more images posted on my behance profile here http://bit.ly/13crKEo



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[edwardo]

Ha, the croc wasn't me. Just a bathroom image I grabbed off the net. I was suggesting that using a backplate image will help make you're water more realistic.

This isn't a bad effort at all. Maybe your water geometry is too 'geometric', like an extruded rectangle? Try remodelling it with softer edges and less regularity (or you could convert it to mesh and bash it about a bit). Other than that you could try some post production work in photoshop - some motion blur, some drops and splashes, some 'foaming' etc.

Nice concept
Ed

[guest84672]

It is great to see what you guys do to show of flowing water - keep it coming!