The water material

The water material is used to specify a water rendering effect to a waterbody surface. It cannot be used on a geometry, or any other object type that is not a waterbody surface.

The water material panel

Its single input channel is a normal map to define the rippling effect on your water surface.

Textures coordinates of a water normal map :

The UVs of a water surface are defined by NDunes, and the unit is 1 meter. So if your water material scaling factor is 1.0, your normal map will by applied on a water surface patch of 1m2, and repeat.

If you want to define a bigger normal map than 1m2, you must scale directly in the water material. For instance, if your normal map represents a patch of water ripples on 10mx10m, you must set the texture coordinates UV scale to 0.1 on both U and V.

The "Repeat UV" must be checked and the Channel must be 0 to work with the water shading.

Scaling the water normal map texture

The parameters defining the rendering aspect of the water :

• Color : pick a color to give a light tint to your water.
• Transmittance : 0.0 value means the water is very clear, 1.0 that it is very opaque.
• IOR : Index of reflection, to set how reflective you want your water to be. Default value for water is 1.33.
• Refract IOR : Index of refraction, to set how refractive you want your water to be. Default value for water is 1.33.

The water is animated in correlation to the wind simulation of NDunes. The wind strength and its direction will impact the ripples on your water surface. However if you want to fine tune the aspect of a specific material, you can use the following parameters :

• Ripple wind speed adjustment : and offset applied to the wind speed for this specific water material, to either slow down or speed up the ripples mouvement. A value of -1.0 means the ripples will remain static, regardless of the wind setup for NDunes.
• Ripple wind strength adjustment : and offset applied to the wind strength for this specific water material, to either attenuate or strengthen the ripples. A value of -1.0 means the ripples wont be visible (fully flat surface), regardless of the wind setup for NDunes.

For directionnal mouvement of water surfaces, you can use the two flow parameters :

• Flow orientation : to set the direction of the flowing mouvement.
• Flow speed : to set the speed of the flowing mouvement.

The flow mouvement will be added to the rippling mouvement.

Emissive material