Help with water for a newbie

Navmaxlp

Forgive me if my question is very simple and/or easy to do. I've been playing with Daz Studio for anout a week now and learning all I can. For the most part, I look for tutorials and such to follow and play along to learn. It's gotten me pretty far to this point but there is one issue I cannot figure out, water.

I have a couple of scenes that require water elements be added, one is a pond scene and the other is a small scene with a raft in the ocean. So far, I'm only working on static images, no animations as yet. The problem is, I have no idea how to add water. I looked around and thought I bought something in the Daz store that would help (Carrara Realistic Seas) but did not realize that was a plug in for a whole other program. Yes, I'm that uninformed and feel silly. Luckily it was only $10. I read about adding a plane and attaching an image to it but either I wasn't following step by step instructions properly or I'm missing something. So is there an easy way to add water to a scene? I've googled and searched and really can't find anything specifically for static images. I'm also a little gun shy having no idea the Carrara product was not going to work. I'll eventually work things out and know what I'm doing but I'd rather not have to waste money on products I can't use.

I do have to say, there are so many settings and aspects to Daz Studio that it does feel a little condusing as to what settings are and how to manipulate them but, I'm really enjoying figuring things out and having fun with what I can do but, this water thing is a bit of a speed bump for me. Any help woiuld really be appreciated.

Richard Haseltine

Simple water can be done with a cube or cylinder (Create>New Primitive) and one of the default wate shaders applied (click on the cube or cylinder with the surface selection tool and you should get a list of shader presets in Smart Content, or the Presets tab of the Surfaces pane). If you use a cube and give it enough divisions you could use a dForm, or a Push Modifier, with a weightmap to add waves (a cylinder wouldn't work as the top is just a series of triangle touching in the middle, so all you can do is move the centre point up/down).

Navmaxlp

Thanks! That worked really well. I used a cube at 100x100 and used a basic water shader on it. It ended up looking like it was on glass. I added a static picture of water from a web search and it gave some good texture. Is there a way to change how white the water looks? I thought it might be lighting but changing that didn't help. I also tried changing the base color with no effect.

I am curious however, how I could add water to a preestablished scene like this:

Secluded Island | Daz 3D

Would using a product like this work?

Epic Skydomes - Ocean Mountain Sunset HDRI | Daz 3D

Richard Haseltine

That woudl work, though it's only one scene and there is only one place within the scene that will take your own model.

If you are not going to chnage its shape then a simple one-division cube would work. I'm not sure what you mean by making ti less white, though - if you want it less clear use one of the dispersive shaders, they scatter and absorb light.