Animating Falling Water


This tutorial will show one technique for animating falling water, ( like a fountain or waterfall ) in Bryce 5 ( can also be accomplished in Bryce 4 ).
The tutorial will use imported objects for a statue and water object. The animation will be of a statue with water flowing out of a vase. A reflective environment will also be used in the scene.


The Water Object and Scene


For best result with this type of animating the object ( used for the water ) and scene should meet a few criteria.
1. The object needs to have a high polygon count. This will receive the water material better and show more detail in the material.
2. The object needs to have a smooth surface with waves, ( extrusion's and indentation's ). This will give more angles for the material to pick up reflections from around the scene.
3. The scene needs to have many objects in it, for the material to reflect, or a reflective environment needs to be built.

This tutorial uses a reflective environment, the water object was made in Amorphium and has 16896 polygons. ( the same type object or a waterfall object could also be made in the Terrain Editor )



The Water Material


The water material is the most important factor in how convincing the animation will look. It will need the properties most water materials have, transparency, reflection, spectral high lights maybe a hint of color. But most important it will need bump. The bump is what will move through the object breaking up the reflection, transparent and spectral areas making the water look as though it's moveing or falling.
Here's a break down of the water material used in this tutorial


Color Channels
The only color set for the material is coming from the specular and volume channels, ( white ) with the halo shaded to a slight gray so the size of the highlights will be minimal. Which means any color ( other than white ) the water may have will be picked up from reflections or because it is translucent, and the color of other objects or elements can be seen through it. Volume is where the material is getting the majority of the white from, with any light that penetrates through the water object cast a white color from the transparent color channel.

Value Channels
With the ambient and diffuse values set to 0.00 they are not applying the white color set in the color channels at all. Where the specular and halo colors are being applied 100% to the areas that will receive highlights from the lighting in the scene. The metallicity channel is not used in this type material so it's set at 0.00. The imported value is bump, it is what will be used to make the water look like it's in motion falling. The bump channel is getting it's information from the texture window ( third window ), and it's value is set moderate at 35.5.

Optic Channels
With the transparency set to 93.7 the material will be almost clear, it is the bump that is breaking up the transparency and giving it more of a translucent look. The reflection is set moderately low at 5.8. ( 1. ) so it won't pick up to much color from the scene, ( 2. ) because it's most important to have the transparency set high, so the material looks like clear water. For real world looking materials, when the transparent and reflection channels are used together, their values should not exceed 100.00 when they are added together. Here their values add up to 99.5. The refraction channel is set to the predetermined value Bryce calculates as being water ( 133 ).

The Texture Window

The important options for the water material in the texture window are:
1. The mapping mode.
2. The scaling of the texture.
3. The bump window ( properties ).

Mapping Mode
Object space works nice for this type of animating. Because it uses the whole texture wrapped onto the object. Where a world space mode will only use a portion of the texture. Object space will also make the movement of the water falling faster, since it's moving the texture on the object, where world space will have to move the texture through the whole scene.

Scaling
The texture may need to be scaled, so the properties of the bump are smaller and more abundant on the object. Scaling positive or negative really will not matter for this type material and mapping mode. Here is an example of a patterned texture, which is mapped the same way as the water, ( object space ) and scaled at -25 ( Negative ), no scaling 0.00, and 25 ( positive ). As can be seen the negative and positive scaling pattern look the same.

Scaled -25%

No Scaling

Scaled 25%

The scaling for the water texture in this tutorial is, 51% on all axes.

The Bump Properties
The properties for the bump ( third image on the texture window ) are created a set in the DTE ( deep texture editor ) it can be accessed by clicking the source editor button on the texture window.


In the DTE the texture has been minimized to show only the bump properties. Color modes have no effect on bump properties, so the color palette and color mode is irrelevant. Since the bump is being produced by one component window, blending modes are irrelevant also. What does matter is the Noise, and the Phasing and Filtering of the Noise Pattern.
Noise Pattern
Waves Noise, is used with the Standard Mode. Waves can be made into just as it sounds ( wavy ). The Standard Mode cuts the frequency ( repeated occurrences ) in half and doubles the amplitude (fullness and abundance ). With no added octaves, the texture is basic, not to complicated ( faster render times ). It is set to 3D so the direction and frequency options can be used in 3 dimensions. The Direction ( orientation ) is rotated so the waves run almost horizontal. Since the animation will have the water falling vertical, with the waves oriented almost horizontal they will break up the refection and transparency better, and look more realistic than if they are oriented vertical like the water is falling. The Frequency is constrained evenly and keep rather small ( this Frequency option, can some what be thought of as scaling the noise pattern ) Although it does repeat itself, the Phase Pattern will break it up.


Phase Pattern
Like Noise, the Phase uses a pattern with all the same options as Noise Patterns, but what it does is interrupt, break up, adds turbulence and displace the Noise Pattern. The Phasing for this texture uses one of the default random noise patterns Continuous, in the Standard Mode. No octaves are added, and since it's not oriented ( rotated ) in any direction it's uses 2 dimensions. It's frequency is low so there's not to much scaling.


Filter

The Clip filter is used to add contrast to the bump by clipping away high and low areas, which adds brighter and darker areas between the ridges. With this filter the A option basically sets the size of the wave, and the B option sets the height. The C option is not used with this filter. With the wave peeking from top to bottom, the contrast areas of the component receive sharp bright areas which work well for bump, in this type material.



Creating the Animation


For this type animation the keyframing is rather simple. First set the duration of the animation up. Then select the water object.
Then in the material lab add a keyframe with the time marker at the first frame, without making any changes to the position translation of the texture window.


Then the time marker is moved to the last frame, and a keyframe added. Then the texture window's position is translated on the Y axes to the negative. The position is translated negative so the material is move downward on the object. ( if it's translated positive it will move upward on the object ) For every second of animation the material should be translated about 100 Bryce units. ( this is an estimate and may vary with different frame rates ). So for this four second animation the texture's position is translated on the Y axes to -400.


Abrupt changes, can posable occur when setting many keyframe for animation like this. But by only setting a keyframe at the start, then a keyframe at the end, insures that the movement of the texture will be smooth, like the flow of water falling.

This animation tutorial is written and provided by : Stephen Ray