Swimming Pool Water...

Robinson

I'm trying to design Jeff Bezos a new summer house but I think when he sees the pool he's going to fire me.  Is there a tutorial or something on how to make really nice looking pool and water, or do people have some good tips I can follow?

I've given the pool border a kind-of cyan colour and then put a cube with a water shader into it.  It looks kind-of nice at night when it's lit by the sidelights (emissives) but during the day it looks severely bleh.  

Any/all tips welcome. 

Robinson

It's just occurred to me that if I put in the palm trees there will be something to reflect off the water and perhaps break up the surface a little.

Richard Haseltine

Near overhead lighting is rarely flattering to environments, and the shadows are not particularly strong so there's limied contrast. Architectural photographers are quite picky about the conditions in whch they work.

rames44

Sickleyield has a couple of pool water products that have nice-looking surfaces if you want "not perfectly smooth water" in your pool. That'd probably make the second shot more realistic-looking. 

Robinson

rames44 said:

Sickleyield has a couple of pool water products that have nice-looking surfaces if you want "not perfectly smooth water" in your pool. That'd probably make the second shot more realistic-looking. 

I see her "pool waters" product.  Looking at the screens what I'm seeing is the underlying texture (the pool floor and sides) has a big impact as you see lines refracted through the water.  I think perhaps I can improve things with a texture on the pool container... I'll give it a go.

Robinson

Richard Haseltine said:

Near overhead lighting is rarely flattering to environments, and the shadows are not particularly strong so there's limied contrast. Architectural photographers are quite picky about the conditions in whch they work.

Yea.  The interiors look great but you really need a lot of "stuff" outside to break up the uniformity, cast shadows and so on.  I think that's part of the problem here.

 

 

chris-2599934

You should definitely apply a suitable normal map to the water cube to give the surface some ripples.

Beyond that, how are you lighting this picture? If it's just a plain white light, or a plain white sun in a plain blue sky, there's nothing for the water to reflect. Using a HDRI that has some clouds in it, and adding some objects to the poolside, should give you better results.

Robinson

chris-2599934 said:

You should definitely apply a suitable normal map to the water cube to give the surface some ripples.

Beyond that, how are you lighting this picture? If it's just a plain white light, or a plain white sun in a plain blue sky, there's nothing for the water to reflect. Using a HDRI that has some clouds in it, and adding some objects to the poolside, should give you better results.

I just have sun-sky turned on.  I want a clear sky. 

Robinson

Camera angle is also very important... I used the midl ceramic tile shader on the pool base and changed the camera out.  I don't much like the "white" sky though.  It's probably correct in terms of rayleigh scattering...  Anyway, progress:

 

nonesuch00

What you what are iray water caustics shaders for water. And various (perlin or other) noise functions for the concrete and other shaders. Look on ShareCG.com for Will Timmins (Oso3D) WTP3 iRay procedural shaders I think gets you most of the way there (besides making the lighting look less noon on the equator on the spring/fall equinoxes).