Studying Puddles

Rain is part of the environmental cycle. So rain is seen every now and again, whether we like it or not! So it makes sense to produce 3D scenes that include wet surfaces and puddles. In this article I will be studying how rain affects materials and how to re-produce them in the virtual environment. To start I set out after a rainy day to take some photo’s in my local area. Paying particular attention to how rain affects tarmac. The way light bounces back from the wet tarmac really equalises the scene.

puddles edit

This is the result of the tutorial video. This gave me a node setup I understood by following the tutorial. So adding modifications is easy and understandable. From the result I highlighted areas for improvement. I wanted to take full advantage of the displacement map; so that the water slips into the lower spaces in detail. To do this I multiplied the bump map in the material nodes to get this result.