3/4 3DS Max Water effects

With the water material still selected, set the Transparency value to 0.5. Scroll down and roll-out the Special Effects tab. Enable Ambient Occlusion and set the Max Distance to 4cm.

Scroll down even more and open the Advanced Rendering Options panel. Set the Max Distance to 50 cm and the Color at Max Distance to a dark greenish color. The deeper the fountain, the darker the water.

Even further down, locate the Displacement entry under Special Purpose Maps. Click the map button and assign a smoke map to it.

Set the Smoke map’s size to 8 and apply {} the material to the water plane.

Switch to the Camera view {“C”} and render the scene. It should look like this

To get a more fountain-like look we need to create some ripples. Set the bump map to 0.2. Right click the Bump Map’s Ocean map entry and click clear.

Click the map button and assign a “Waves” map to it.

In the Waves map change:

» the X and Y Tiling to 2
» the Num Wave Sets to 4
» the  Wave Len Max to 30, the Min to 7 and the Wave Radius to 4
» the Distribution to 2D

4/4 Tweaks and materials

Finally, you can import our fountain material files.

The fountain_misc is for the small, center- cylinders and fountain base is for the fountain body and the plane that makes-up its base.

Switch to the Camera view and render:

The End

By combining this tutorial with the Realistic Grass, the Old Rock Procedural Texture and the HDR Reflections tutorials we got:

Could of been even better if we would of used the techniques from the Mental Ray Caustics one too. Play around, see what you get.

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