Realflow 2012 and maxwell render 2.7.10 64

[lzmihich]

I am using Maxwell Render 2.7 Max plugin (latest version) to render my ocean simulation.
I know woud be more suitable, to go to Maxwell forums, but I am curious to know, How people deal
with splashes and foam shaders, as for me the materials get pale and don't shine ,(I am following shader tutorials), and if you use
IBL (image based Lihting) the HDR makes the foam material black, no matter which HDR image I've selected ,
at least on this latest Max plugin !
, also there's a serious axis issue with the Active Shader, making it flip on unexpected directions, i know it is a confirmed bug,already.
but 3 versions after they confirmed, it is still there.
I think Realflow is nothing without proper Shaders to Render.

[thecayflow]

Hi lzmihich,
In regards to the black look of your foam, are you using any additive layer? Stay away of additives as much as possible, if you want to add shinniness you better use an aditional BSDF with low roughness (or even zero) to contribute to the final result. Additives are rarely an option and I just use them for some specific cases of carpaint (and not always). Not even plastics.

For materials like foam, if you don't want to use a semitransparent material with SSS (I think I've never used it for foam actually), and get a very convincing result in an acceptable time, you have several ways to make them brighter: make sure you turn on the option 'Force Fresnel' to higher values than usual (5, 20, 100 or even more..): it will make them more shiny as the Nd rises, but in this case, make sure no transmittance is applied to the material, ie.: make it completely opaque. Nd works in a completely different way if the object is (semi)-transparent than if opaque.

For shiny materials, the basic approach is to set up 1 single layer with 2 BSDF's.
1st BSDF - Weight 90-95. This component controls the base color (Refl.0), if possible try to avoid total values such as 250-255.. in any RGB channel. Roughness 90-99 should work fine. Never use 100%
2nd BSDF - Weight 10 - 5. This component controls the quantity of "shininess". Enable Force Fresnel, crank up the Nd (the higher is the value the brighter will be your object), and use a neutral Refl.0 and Refl.90 color (unless you want to 'tint' those reflections), and decrease the value for the roughness: for instance, 0 for completely shiny plastics... but in the case of foam, believe it or not, it's not strictly mandatory to make it super-reflective for a convincing result, actually I'd say that the roughness value here was pretty high (around 80):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzFnE-N8ZXY

[lzmihich]

Thank you for the detailed explanation.
Apreciatted it.
Exactly what I needed, and I'll
try adding another BSDF and following your directions.
Give feedback soon,(maybe this help others with same doubts ) if I reach a decent foam.
the problem and What I lack is simply to be more familiar with (powerful) material editor in Maxwell.
...
Few tryouts afterwards , didn't quite work for me ,as it is still very pale foam specially compared to the brilliant (in both senses )
water foam in the You tube link.
I am crancking up ND only the second BSDF right ?and keeping the first with water IOR (1.33)
and I am checking (was before anyway ) force fresnel.
sending a test frame , and still trying to understand What am I doing wrong.
Do you know any visual tutorial on the subject ?..
Time has passed and was able to get better results for the foam,in the frame test atached not bright enough for the splashes or the fishes.
Foam really works in the animation.

[thecayflow]

See a quick test I made for you (with Physical Sky enabled & disabled). There's one Grid Mesh and some splashes around, not foam yet, but it could be pretty much the same thing.

Grid Mesh material:
Create a new Maxwell material, in the Maxwell tab go to Wizard > Water. Decrease the attenuation distance to 2cm. Done.
(IMPOORTANT: I'm using a real scale, the water area is 10x15 metres. If you're not using real scale, you may consider to modify this value in order to make the water more/less transparent). It's also VERY important to place some geometry under the water grid mesh, playing the role of a floor).

Splash/Foam:
Create a new Maxwell material, crank up the Refl0 color to 242,242,242. Done.
You should get a white colored mass environment-agnostic, to keep its color as much as possible.

Taking a look at your picture, I'd say that the issue is coming from lighting amount rather than from the material side. You may want to go Maxwell globals > Environment > IBL > Ilumination > Disable "Same as background" and increase the Intesity multiplier. You'll be adding much more light into the scene while keeping the same background intensity. Try the 2 materials I described above, and let's see.

[thecayflow]

A couple of tests (daylight & indoor) with some foam and splashes. In this case I just set the Refl0 no higher than 160's and seems to work ok (probably more splash particles are needed), but in this case there's no need to use extreme values. I did use the Maxwell particler for both splash/foam (you can make a material connected to magnitudes as velocity, as I did in this case).

It's crucial to surround the fluids with some geometry (floor, walls) and some powerful lights (in these cases: a physical sky for the first one and 2 planes x 5.000 watts in the second one). If using an HDR, make sure there's enough light in your scene in order to remark the brightness of your foam and/or any other high specularity objects.

[lzmihich]

Thank you very much, for your kind reply and help, sorry about the delay of this reply.
I am even in another country right now, and didn't access the forum for some time.
I totally agree that i may have a lighting issue, and intuitively I'd cranked and boosted my IBL file,
but the precious tip is to keep the background , to better visualize the future beauty pass, as I am using an alpha pass.
I can't wait to render a newer version of my frame according to what you've showed me.
and thank you for taking the time for the tests.I will publish here my progress.
I uploaded my recent result using your tip, there is very litlle foam and splashes but they look better,
I am going o add a displacement tif sequence,but I am having a hard time trying to upload it in 3ds Max,
,even if I tick the bitmap sequence option in Maxwell material editor.
but I guess I'll have to open a new topic for that.

[thecayflow]

No worries at all, I wish the best success for your project!

Definitely it looks way better, you're going in the right direction. Just add more splashes and as you said, some displacement on top of the surface, it would look great.

Cheers

[lzmihich]

Thank you for your incredible kindness and expertise.