I need help with my water (other advice welcome too)

NickPell

Hey boys,

I've got this little scene that I'm going to be presenting to a panel of judges in about 2 weeks from now.
My idea was to create this in a low-poly style, and since I've always loved to draw, I thought I'd capitalize on my strengths by drawing all my textures 100% by hand in photoshop. Here is a general view of some elements in the scene which you can comment on if you want! I'll explain my problem a bit lower.







Oops! Just spotted some floating grass on the cliff near the right! 



So anyway, I think it looks decent, though I'm planning on adding one more type of rock (what you see here is all the same oblong rock re-used many times). Would have loved to add more objects, but it'll all depend on whether I can find the time. Still, advice is welcome!

One thing isn't quite done yet though: the water.
This was my inspiration, though I'd like mine to be less opaque.



I have no clue how to do the little white foam that sticks to every edge, but this is from a video that anoher student made last year, and I quite like what he did at the edges there. Seems to be a combination of Fresnel and Depth Fade working together...? Mhh... I can't ask him, because he finished school and I have no idea where he is.





Setting up materials isn't really my forte, so I could really use some help on that. I have 3 different "pieces" of water in my scene. You can see two of them here: a little waterfall behind the sword, and the main body of water, a river. (I will add little wave effects at the bottom of the waterfall).



Here is the waterfall from a better angle 




My main problem is that they are both a little too transparent. I'm not gonna lie... if you look at my materials below, you will probably feel that I have no clue what I'm doing, and you'll be correct. I've got a chance to really sit down with the teacher and get some help next Monday and Tuesday, but I'd like to get a head start so I can be sure to finish on time.

This is the waterfall:



And this is the river:



I actually find the river to look kind of decent, but it has two problems, which you can see in the next image: It becomes invisible when in sunlight, and the fresnel effect is a little too strong when seen from a low angle.



I probably won't show this angle, but I still want to know how to do it correctly.
This is the sea, by the way... I won't really show a close view of it, but I still want to know if there's anything I could do to make it look nicer.



Oh, and finally, there's something bothering me about the jewel on the sword!
I was hoping to make it look like a diamond, but right now it's kind of flat. How would you make it pop it out more?



This is what it looks on my texture and my normal map.



Thanks everyone!
Nick

Mirbobo

Hey Nick, for the water contact you can use inverted depth fade, but you can also use a strip of geo with a different material around the pond/river to create the similar effect. For the opacity issue you can simply clamp the opacity values if you don't want it to go full zero.
For the Jewel I'd just use geo.

jStins

Diamonds are tough because their appeal relies heavily on light refraction and reflection. Those effects are typically painted into the texture in purely hand painted styles. I agree with Mirbobo that you should probably use geometry there. You could also try less of a pure white as a base color and paint in more fake reflections/refraction detail. It looks like the light is blown out there which and crushing the normal map. 

I don't have anything to add on the water, but I think you have a nice start there. Good luck with the project!