This page provides information on the V-Ray Water Texture.


Overview

The Water texture map can be used to generate a procedural water texture. 

Any texture can be replaced via the Replace With New Texture () button, which activates when you select the texture to be replaced. If the texture is an instance, all copies are changed as well.



UI Paths

||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Textures (right-click) > Water

||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Create Asset (left-click) > Textures > Water


General Workflow

Create a Generic material and apply it to a surface (recommended), or an object.

Make it fully refractive (Refractive Color (255,255,255)) with Refraction IOR of 1.33. Make the Reflection Color closer to white (222,222,222) and set the Max Depth for Reflection and Refraction to 10.

Optionally set a light blue Fog Color (Refraction > Fog Color) to recreate blue sea or ocean water.

For Caustics, disable the Affect shadows option (Refraction > Affect Shadows > off) in the advanced settings of the Water material.

Add a Displacement asset (Asset editor > Geometry > Displacement) and assign it to the Water Geometry.

Add the Water texture in the Mode/Map slot with Normal Displacement Mode.

For achieving fast results Water texture can be used as a Bump map instead, but no Caustics can be generated.

Adjust the scale of the Material’s texture accordingly.


Parameters

Height Multiplier – Specifies a scale multiplier for the whole texture. See the Height Multiplier example below for more information.

Resolution (pixels) – Specifies the amount of detail in the generated map.

Patch Size – Specifies the real world size of one Water texture patch, outside of which the surface is perfectly periodic.

Seed – Specifies an integer to set the starting point for the random generator. Different values produce different waves randomly. See the Seed example below for more information.

Wind

Wind Direction – Specifies the wind direction and thus the direction of the waves.

Wind Direction Mult – Specifies a multiplier for the importance of the wind direction. Smaller values produce more variation in the direction of the waves.

Wind Magnitude – Specifies the strength of the wind creating the waves. Higher values produce larger waves.

Choppy Mult – Specifies a multiplier for the choppiness of the waves. Higher values produce sharper looking waves.

Movement Rate – Speeds up or slows down the movement of the waves. This value has an effect only in an animation.

See the Wind Example below for more visual information.



Example: Height Multiplier


This example shows how the Height Multiplier affects the height of the waves.


Height Multiplier = 0.5

Height Multiplier = 1.0

Height Multiplier = 2.0



Example: Seed


The example shows how the Seed parameter randomizes the waves pattern of the Water texture.


seed1

Seed = 1.0

seed3

Seed = 3.0

seed5

Seed = 5.0



Example: Wind


The animated example here shows how the Wind parameter affects the waves pattern of the Water Tex. None of the texture parameters need to be animated to produce moving waves.
Wind Direction is set to 50, Wind Magnitude is set to 15, Movement Rate is set to 2, Height Multiplier is set to 0.5, and Seed is set to 3.
The Amount for the WaterTex is set to 2 in the water material’s Displacement.


Water-Wind