How to make a perfectly seamless rippling water effect

[jfcwilson]

Here's how to make a 3D rendering have a seamless rippling water effect.

1. Start a new scene in Bryce(or whatever 3d app you use).
2. Model and texture your scene, including some water, like a pond.
3. Position and rotate your virtual camera, to form one frame of a "node".
4. Note down the exact position and angle of your camera, like so:

n1_f1.jpg: x 234.5 y 809 z 56.9 Rotate 0 x 75 y 0 z.

If your rendering has any water in it, note "water=true", or something similar.
5. Switch to camera view, and render your frame. Save the finished image as "n1_f1.jpg".
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 for all your frames, progressing through frame names as you go, e.g. "n1_f2", n1_n3", "n1_f4", "n2_f1", etc. etc.
7. Make a copy of your scene, and rename it as "Water masks".
8. Find all the water in your scene and set its color family to blue.
9. Find everything else and set its color family to red.
10. Select all of the red color family.
11. Set the texture to purely diffuse white.
12. Select all of the blue color family.
13. Set the texture to flat black.
14. Turn shadows off.
15. Postion the sun directly above, at noon.
16. Open your text file and look at the camera postions you noted down earlier.
17. Select the camera and place it at one of the "water=true" postions and rotations. Get the postion and rotation EXACTLY right.
18. Switch to camera view and render the frame as: "N_F_mask.jpg", where N is the node number of the camera postion you're using, and F is the frame, e.g. "n1_f1".
19. Repeat steps 16 through 18, changing the saved image name to corrospond with the rendered artwork it belongs to.
20. Open Adventure Maker. Start a new project.
21. Import your rendered frames(the artwork, not the black and white masks) into AM.
22. Program your regular things, hotspots, scripts, etc.
23. Go to the first frame that has water in it and click "Rippling Water Effects".
24. Select the entire image.
25. It doesen't matter what you do here, just a quick scribble will do fine.
26. Find the file that has the crude, drawn mask in it(something like "n1_f1.rwm".
27. Rename it to "n1_f1.bmp", and open it in Paint.
28. Also open the correct rendered water mask. Select all on that, copy.
29. Paste into the AM made mask.
30. Save, than rename the file back to n1_f1.rwm.
31. Repeat steps 23 through 30, with the other files.
32. Click "Run Project."

Now, you should have a perfect rippling water effect, right where it should be, no matter how complex your rendering.
Hope you like it.

[Lyberodoggy]

thanks for the tutorial

[jfcwilson]

You're certainly welcome.