It's Not Just Water and Bubbles 🌊
Creating a realistic underwater scene in 3D is like cooking: if you only use blue food coloring and gas, you'll end up with a soda, not the ocean. To achieve that dense and mysterious atmosphere, you need to master volumetric lighting, materials altered by water, and those small details that make depth believable.
Underwater realism isn't achieved with a blue filter, but with physics, scattering, and a pinch of controlled disorder.
Light Underwater: Where Photons Go to Die
Light behaves strangely under the sea. It doesn't just lose intensity; it changes color and scatters. To imitate this, you need:
- Volume Scatter to simulate suspended particles.
- Color Absorption (greenish-blue, not pure blue).
- A single light beam that simulates the sun filtering from the surface. ☀️
In Blender, combining Volume Scatter and Volume Absorption in the same shader gives incredible results. And no, increasing the blur isn't enough.
Materials That Have Seen Things (Underwater)
PBR textures on dry land don't work the same when submerged. Roughness increases, reflections blur, and everything looks covered in a thin layer of... well, water. To achieve this:
- Add procedural imperfections (algae, corrosion).
- Use Subsurface Scattering on corals and creatures.
- Moss and adhesion textures on rocks and metals. 🐚
The Magic Touch: Caustics and Particles
Without animated caustics and floating particles, your scene will look like a clean pool. To avoid that:
- Animate projected lights with wave textures.
- Add volumetric fog to simulate depth.
- Scatter billboard particles (dust, plankton).
With these elements, even a floating cube will seem part of a mysterious shipwreck. And if you add a clownfish, at least say it's an artistic homage to Finding Nemo. 🐠
Post-Production: The Last Step (But Not the Least Important)
A slight blur, chromatic aberration, and cold color adjustments can turn a technically correct render into a cinematic scene. And if someone tells you "it looks too dark", remind them that the ocean doesn't have day mode. 🌑
Now go and make Poseidon proud... or at least don't get sued for bad water representation.