Some weeks ago, there was a discussion on how to use Illusion for making animated displacement maps, on the Illusion mailing list. Now, why didn't I think of that, here I've been trying to make a sea-object with animated waves the hard way, when it' so simple to generate a greyscale displacment map with Illusion. This is a short explanation how I generated and used animated displacment maps.
Software I used for this is Illusion v1.1 and Imagine v2.1.3 from Impulse Inc and Terragen v0.8 a shareware landscape generator from Planetside Software. Photoshop to do some basic wave shapes.
Displacement maps
First of all I needed different wave shapes to play with so I made some in Photoshop. After testing different shapes, directions for the waves, sizes and speed, this is basicly what I used.
- Project size = 320x240 pixels
- Frames to render = 200
- Wave shapes = 4
I used 4 layers with 8 - 10 emitters on each layer, trying to mix the shapes in a good way. When I was satisfied I generated 200 frames to use with Imagine.
| This picture shows one frame of my displacment map. If you want to check it out, you can download the Illusion project file klick here or on the pic. |  |
Imagine object
I used a plane, 640 x 480 in size, with 128 horz. sections and 96 vert. sections. The basic attributes are:
-
Base Color = very dark blue (almost black)
-
Hardness = 233
-
Specular color (R,G,B) = 218
-
Index of Refraction = 1,33
For the filter and reflection I used Imagines own Fakely texture and to make it more 'come to life sort of' I used Ingvar Lybings fractal bump texture. For the first state, Go to 'States > Create', this will be the DEFAULT STATE and make sure to check all the boxes. Save, and we are ready to make all the rest of those 200 states. This is hard work, whish Impuls could come up with an easy way to do this repeat work in Imagine v3.0.
Anyway, the next state will be the first with a displacment map. Select 'Functions > Applique' and serch for your first displacement map. For Wrap method keep 'flat in x and z' and klick on 'Transform axes'. In the Transformation requester that pops up check 'size' and enter 15 for the 'Y - size'. This is the height for the waves. Klick 'perform' and then 'OK'. The first state is ready to be saved. Go to 'States > Create', select a name (ex. wa001, makes it easy to pick when you are in the stage editor) and select 'SHAPES' only, klick on OK. That's the first one, only 199 left and don't forget to save your object once in a while.
This is how my wave object look like, without and with the fractal bump texture. Final object size 30Mb+
|
|
 |
Stage Editor
The next step would be the stage editor. After some tests I decided to go for a 400 frame animation. That would give me 2 frames/state. The frame rate is 25 frames/sec.
Added a background pic made with Terragen (nice prog.), a ground object and my wave object. The lightning I used was one light acting as the sun and one fill light to soften up the shadows. I have a nice skypicture that I often use as a 'Global Brush' when I want a good looking reflection in the water.
Opened the 'Action Editor' and added all states, 2 frames/state and made some minor adjustments on the lightning. Did some testrenders and it looked OK. The final render took around 18 houres to do and I used the tga image format instead of using the avi format. If something happens in the middle of the rendering, I don't have to start all over again when using a image format to save the rendering.
 |
Illusion effects
Now it's time to finnish off with Illusion. What I wanted to see, was some sparkling in the waves and the water that breakes on the shore. This would add more life into the animation.
I made two emitters, one for the sparkling and one for the white water. Anyone who wants to experiment can download the nature-iel.zip here. All emitters I used for this animation is in there.
|
So, to the left is the finnished animation with Illusion effects added. I'm really satisfied with the result and hope I can inspire others to experiment with displacement maps. To see a bigger image klick on the pic. Klick on the waves-small.zip if you want to download the anim (2,7Mb, 320 x 240 mpg). Lars Fresk |
 |
Any questions about this, mail me at l-fresk@algonet.se