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I'm working on a small creek including animated water (using a fluid domain). While I'm satisfied with the baked flowing animation of the water, I don't really like how it looks. Here's a render:

Water texture

It's way too opaque (nontransparent), I would like to have a more cristal-clear type of water. I've cranked up the brightness of the sun, but as you see, that only increases the brightness of the reflection. I've tried using fill lights from different angles to brighten up the scene, which works to some extent, but the texture still looks like ink. So I'm looking for help on how to make it look more like clear water.

Here's my current texture:

water texture

PGmath
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MoritzLost
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  • What color do you want to see? Brown earth? Stylized blue water? Please post an image of something that would be your goal. – atomicbezierslinger Jan 19 '16 at 20:00
  • I was going for a realistic look ... there's a reddish/brown stone texture on the bottom of the creek though – MoritzLost Jan 19 '16 at 20:03
  • Please see. http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/64/how-can-i-create-a-water-material-in-cycles . Where did you get your nodes depicted? They are many realistic views in the world. – atomicbezierslinger Jan 19 '16 at 20:29
  • What kind of environment lighting do you have? – PGmath Jan 19 '16 at 21:05
  • @atomicbezierslinger From a Youtube tutorial. However, it was focused on the fluid simulation rather than the texture, so it probably wasn't very elaborate ... Ok I tried building the material depicted in the accepted answer to the question you linked, but now my water is completely black °A° ... ? – MoritzLost Jan 20 '16 at 13:37
  • @PGmath I have one sun directed coming from the opposite direction the camera is pointing to .. somewhere between dawn and midday, I guess. I will also add some area lights as fill lighting to soften the shadows – MoritzLost Jan 20 '16 at 13:39
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    That's why your water looks like ink, you have no environment for it to reflect! Try using an HDR IBL (image based lighting), Greg Zaal has some really good free ones. Or try Andrew Price's Pro Lighting: Skies (it has a free version). – PGmath Jan 20 '16 at 14:12
  • @PGmath Thank you! I don't really want to use assets from other people, but I have some regular high-resolution sky picture I took myself. They're not HDR images, but I'll play around with it a bit and see how far I get with that ... – MoritzLost Jan 20 '16 at 16:43
  • This may or may not be of importance, but do you have the number of bounces set high enough (properties window -> render tab -> light paths panel) Transparancy, Bounces, and Transmission values may affect your result. – Phip Jan 20 '16 at 19:26
  • I think your problem is that you dont seem to have a sky etc to reflect. You also need some more ambient light to illuminate the dark corners. – AdamTM Jan 20 '16 at 14:40

1 Answers1

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Maybe im just too late right here, but anyways.

You need to mix a glass shader (put 1.35 IOR) with a transparent BSDF and you're done, or if you wanna go beyond and have a photorealistic water looking, you can do it by combining the Principled BSDF and transparent BSDF.

Change these settings on the Principled Shader:

Roughness to 0 or 0.05 (depending on the type of water, if dirty, clean, etc) IOR to 1.35 Transparent to 1 or 0.9 if dirty and such (you can also play with the colour and the transparent bar to add some color to the water)

J. J.
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