Water In Rendering

[Bill Tillman]

I have a 3D model of a boat and want to render it sitting in the water next to a dock, I never did anything with water in any of my previous renderings. Can someone tell me an easy way to get a surface which will look like lake water?

[Cad64]

Have you tried using the standard water materials in Autocad? I didn't install the materials library, since I don't do any 3D work in Autocad, so I can't test them to see how they look.

[lrm]

You might start with the Default Water material and then Generic Pond/Lake for the Type and Color.  Adjust the tint color to your linking as well as the Wave Height.  Turn on the Environment and play around with the exposure.  A lot of experimentation is required so start with a simple model to speed rendering times.  Good luck.

 

 

  

[BIGAL]

Make sure you don't do the render on a windy day or the Wave height may be a problem.

[Bill Tillman]

Thanks all. I got it working using the generic water in the materials. Looks nice. 

[Bill Tillman]

Well it was working great but then.... my computer crashed and the CAD file somehow got corrupted. I used DXFOUT to get things settled down but now the beautiful water that looked so real is now a very bland gray surface that looks more like Berber carpet that the nice shiny, wavy surface that was here a few hours ago. I'll try and post the file later but I will have to remove many of the proprietary items to avoid conflict with my NDA with this client.

 

Also I'm noticing the same thing which happened on my last rendering assignment using the latest AutoCAD program. About 3 years ago I was working with AutoCAD 2013 and it produced realistically beautiful renderings. The stuff coming out of 2020 always looks blurry and cartoonish rather than those crisp, clear renderings I was once getting from AutoCAD.

Edited September 27, 2019 by Bill Tillman

[Cad64]

If I had to guess I would say the DXFOUT is probably what screwed everything up with the materials. If you still have the original corrupted file, and you can get it open, Use WBLOCK to save out a new copy. I think you will have better luck.

[lrm]

1 hour ago, Bill Tillman said:

The stuff coming out of 2020 always looks blurry and cartoonish rather than those crisp, clear renderings I was once getting from AutoCAD.

 

There are many settings that affect the final image as you know if you have done any rendering .  The render engines that Autodesk uses for its products have changed in the past few years.  This is even more evident in 3ds Max with the elimination of Mental Rays and the introduction of ART and Arnold (sounds like a comedy team).

 

As for the file corruption it's always worth a shot to open a new blank drawing and then insert the corrupted drawing into it.  This has saved me on occasion.