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Water

previous: Realistic water with Povray - part 1 current: Realistic water with Povray - part 2 next: Realistic water with Povray - part 3 Navigation

Realistic water with POV-Ray - pigment and finish

This part introduces the different aspects of POV-Ray's pigment and finish statements that are important for water. For the other parts of the tutorial go to the tutorial starting page.

Most important for the appearance of the water are the surface texture's pigment and finish properties. Together with normal they form the texture which describes the properties of the actual surface of an object. The pigment specifies the surface color while the finish describes how the surface interacts with lights.

pigment

With the pigment you define the surface color. This can be a plain color or a use an arbitrarily complicated pattern with different colors. Here we only use a plain color.

In the introduction, i used color rgbf <1, 1, 1, 1> which is completely transparent.

Changing the filter or transmit value makes the surface influence the rays, therefore things under water appear in a different color.

With transmit you can change the non-filtering transparency of the water. This means things below get darker, but the color itself has no influence:

color rgbt <0.20.70.30.5>

color rgbt <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> color rgbt <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> color rgbt <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5>
color rgbt <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> (difference) color rgbt <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> (difference) color rgbt <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> (difference)

With filter on the other hand the surface filters the light going through:

color rgbf <0.20.70.30.5>

color rgbf <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> color rgbf <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5> color rgbf <0.2, 0.7, 0.3, 0.5>

In general, a completely transparent pigment should be most realistic. Even if the water contains particles and therefore is not completely clear, the surface itself does not attenuate the light. How to influence influence the rays below the actual surface is described in the interior section.

finish

I will now describe the basic finish components that are relevant for water. Reflection is described in detail in a separate section.

In the last samples, ambient and diffuse finish components are 0. Note that changing these values only has effect if the filter or transmit value of the pigment is different from 1, if it is not, the surface is completely transparent.

Increasing the ambient finish now colors the whole surface with the color the pigment describes. This is usually not of much use for water.

ambient 0.2

ambient 0.5 ambient 0.5 ambient 0.5
ambient 0.5 (difference) ambient 0.5 (difference) ambient 0.5 (difference)

With diffuse only the parts exposed to the light source are colored. This is a possibility to make the water look a bit muddy without using scattering media.

diffuse 0.3

ambient 0.5 ambient 0.5 ambient 0.5
ambient 0.5 (difference) ambient 0.5 (difference) ambient 0.5 (difference)

Finally you can also add specular highlights to the surface. There are two different models for doing this in POV-Ray, phong and specular, here only specular is described.

A secondary parameter, roughness influences the size of the highlights.

no highlights specular 0.8, roughness 0.003 specular 0.8, roughness 0.03
no highlights specular 0.8, roughness 0.003 specular 0.8, roughness 0.03

These are the general finish parameters that can be useful for water. Still missing is of course reflection which is described in the following part.

Continue with Part 3 (reflection).