Adding the water surface

So far you have installed and applied VEX shaders for the coral ground plane and the caustic light. In this section you will apply a default shader already in Houdini to another grid to create a wavy surface.

You will also create a blue phong material in the Material editor for the water color. This demonstrates that both VEX shaders and materials can be used together in the same rendering.

As a finishing touch to the water you will add another light to create some wave highlights.

1. Open underwater.hip and go to the SHOPS network editor.

2. Add a "VEX Choppy Water" SHOP. (one of Houdini's default SHOPs)

3. Set the following:

Noise Frequency x=0.2 y=0.7 z=0.7
Noise Offset x=$T*0.1 y=$T*0.3 z=$T*0.3

4. Change the Network editor from SHOPs to Materials.

5. Add a phong material and name it water_surface.

6. Set the following:

Diffuse r=0.47 g=0.54 b=0.8
Ambient r=1 g=1 b=1
Specular r=0.74 g=0.79 b=1
Reflect r= 0 g= 0 b= 0

7. Change the Network editor from Materials to Objects.

8. Add a geometry object and call it water_surface.

9. Select the Shading tab in the parameters window.

10. Click the Material tab and select water_surface.

*If this material was assigned at the SOP level the water object would just appear white. When using the Vmantra output, materials must be assigned at the object level to render properly.

11. Click the SHOP Displacement flyout arrow and select v_choppywater1.

12. Select the Render tab in the parameters window.

13. Click the Dispace Bound and set the value to 0.1.

14. Enter the SOP level and delete the "file sop".

15. Add a grid sop and set:

Primitive Type = NURBS
Orientation = ZX plane
Size x = 60 y = 70
Center x = 0 y = 8.1 z = -25

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