The Waterfall

Starting guide

Idea and Concept

Based on this Concept by Jaime Martinez

Boarding

• Water:

This scene is full of technical challenges. One of the most important technical goals is to achieve the best water possible and in general, realistic shaders. River and waterfall is vital here. Features:

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• Box projected Reflections
• Refraction
• Chromatic aberration
• Foam
• Flow
• Physically based Specular. Used Bruneton et al. lighting model. Eurographics 2010

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• Vegetation:
• High detailed trees and several foliage pieces (Im a lazy artist... :/ )
• Back face lighting

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• Rocks:
• Must look wet or dry depending its location
• If its underwater, it will appear caustics, reflection is off and color is dark
• Must look wet and populated by moss.

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• Terrain:
• Usage of tessellation and texture blending
• Depth / Underwater conditions
• Caustics
• Shore shading
• Underwater shading
• Different lighting models depending penumbra / directly lit / humidity conditions

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Boarding

• Particles:

Waterfall should be dressed with high quality particles.

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• Water Drops
• Water dust
• Real time normal map generation
• Foam
• Bubbles

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• Shaders:

Must be as realistic as possible. That means:

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• Physically correct BRDFs when needed or possible
• Try to mimic the most important nature behaviours such as:
• Wet surfaces
• Penumbra lighting
• Light transmission in organic elements

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• Overall predictions
• From now I know this scene is going to run so slow. Why?
• Too many actors
• Too complex shaders
• Lots of overdraw
• Lots of geometry. I spect to reach no more than 1 million
• Maybe about 300 - 400 mb in textures. Another 100 for lighting?

And...

• I'll need people for animation. Which means, delays.
• I'll need people for organic modeling. Once more, delays.
• Lighting will be a hard task.

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