I need muddy water

[esorensen]

Has anyone successfully created other water shader styles? If so can you point me in the right direction, I need to model muddy water, the default water shader looks too good for the river project I'm working on.

[thoellering2]

The lack of support for this product is staggering. I asked about this at every booth and every person that Autodesk had at AU2013, and none had a clue. The only guy I was able to get something out of was one of the instructors, who mentioned that Autodesk had an "internal" e-mail where someone shared how to add custom mapping components to the library. Its really frustrating...

Overall I give a big fail to any and all booths who had people who could do a demo, but not answer deep technical questions.

[esorensen]

I'm determined to find out, my kids can change the texture maps in Minecraft with ease, I'm sure its possible in InfraWorks too, I just need to figure out how they made the first water shader work, then undo that and make it look uglier.  

[elliott.rosenfeld]

Hi esorensen,

Have you tried editing the Water style in the Style Palette? You can open the Style Palette and scroll down on the left edge until you see "Water". Click on that to view Water Area styles. Make a copy of a style, give it a name, and then double click the new style to Configure the settings for that Water Style. I haven't actually tried to make muddy water, but I believe you can click the browse butto ("...") for the "Water surface material" field to edit the Materials and Colors associated with that Style. Let me know if this ends up working for you!

Best,

Elliott

[tcorey]

I have been fiddling with this for quite a while now. I have found no way to get past BUILTIN_WATER_SHADER. A search on the hard drive finds nothing, so likely this is indeed a built-in tool that is hardcoded in the program itself, not created as a style. I'd sure like to hear from one of our friends at Autodesk regarding this.

It's easy enough to change the water color and/or texture, but then you lose the wave action.

[esorensen]

Tcorey sounds like you came to the same conclusion as I did. I'm running the infrastructure design suite and am thinking about taking the deep dive in to Max to solve the problem. If I find a solutions I'll post it.

[tcorey]

Thanks. I'll be watching!

[heiko.meyerdirks]

You are correct, the water shader is indeed built in. You can create muddy water by using a static muddy water texture but you will not be able to create an animated muddy water shader yourself.

Here is how to create static muddy water:

• Open the style Palette (Create conceptual design features -> Style Palette)
• Material Tab -> Water
• + (Add new)
• Select an muddy water texture and press OK to save it.
• Water Tab
• + (Add new)
• Select the newly created material as Water surface material

I hope this helps you

Heiko

[tcorey]

Thanks for providing a definitive answer.

Wish list.

[neilyj666]

Where do you get a muddy water texture from?

[srksphillips]

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@esorensen wrote:

Has anyone successfully created other water shader styles? If so can you point me in the right direction, I need to model muddy water, the default water shader looks too good for the river project I'm working on.

---

Too late know but might be useful to someone else. I recently discovered you can change the colour via the Model Explorer by Activating Highlighting. Change the colour by right-clicking the Water Areas and choosing  Set Highlighting Color...

It's a bit limiting and it can look odd if you get it wrong but hey, that's all I have as a workaround. Make sure you only use very dark colours or it will look like it contains nuclear waste! Note that the colour is also displayed when rendering.

[kwilktrihydro]

That's a sweet work-around. Haven't seen this one before, touche.