Getting Started
with WCS 6 Part 6D.
Lakes & Streams
108. Our stream will have foliage
we'd like to see, so open the popup menu, and select Render
Options > Land Cover > Other Foliage
to render Foliage Objects.
109. That will include the Pine
Burn Ecosystem, so expand the Ecosystems in the lower Scene-At-A-Glance and disable it.
110. Go to the Water Task
Mode and select the Streams category. Add Component
from Gallery.
111. Load the Small Stream.
112. Find the Stream Vector
in the lower Scene-At-A-Glance and Ctrl+C to copy it.
113. Select the Small Stream
Component in the upper pane and Ctrl+V to paste. Confirm
the operation.
114. Reset the Stream Resolution.
115. Save the project and render
a preview.
116. The stream is not rendering
in all of the stream bed. While the Stream Terraffector
radius is 15 meters, the Small Stream Component
Effect Radius is only about 7 meters.
117. Increase it to 16
meters.
118. Where the Small Stream
enters the Lake, we can see its elevation is too high.
Open Diagnostic
Data with the F4 key if it's not visible. The Stream elevation
is about 2065.3 meters at the confluence relative to the
Lake's is 2064.
119. Go to the Water Material
> Depth tab and drop the Water Depth another
1.3 meters to -1.6. Your Small Stream elevation
will be different so you'll have to adjust your Water Depth accordingly.
120. Save the project and render
a preview.
121. Like Lakes, Streams have
Beaches. On the Beach Gradient page, the Small
Stream Component shows 2 Materials, Mud and Water Plants.
Placement is driven by a Material Gradient texture.
122. Edit Texture, and
we see that Water Depth is the controlling Dynamic Parameter.
123. At a water depth of 0
meters, Mud is rendered. At water depths of 0.5 meters
and deeper, Water Plants are rendered.
124. On the Beach Materials
page, Mud uses a Diffuse Color texture and Water Plants renders
a Diffuse Color and Ecotype.
125. Edit the Ecotype
and we see it's made up of Cattails and Grass Clumps.
126. Go to the Land Cover
Task Mode and enable the Pine Burn Ecosystem.
127. Let's see how our Lake View
looks with trees. Save the project and render a preview.
128. We're close enough to the
foliage that we really notice the lack of shadows. Go to the
Light Task Mode, select the Shadows category, and
Create.
129. We're creating a new Shadow
with an attached Vector. We don't need to use a vector to bound
a Shadow Component, but it saves rendering time and increases
Shadow quality.
130. Zoom back a notch in the
Plan view and digitize a polygon around the Lake View
Camera view area.
131. Name it Lake View
Shadow and confirm the operation. Close out the Component Gallery.
132. Reset the Shadow Resolution.
133. On the Cast Shadows
page, select Cast. This controls the casting of shadows
by terrain and foliage. Shadow casting of 3D Objects and
Clouds is controlled by their respective Editors.
134. The Receive Shadows page
determines what shadows will be cast on the terrain.
135. Let's enable the rest of
our DEMs in the Database
Editor. Our Shadow, Stream,
Foliage Effect, and Lake Vectors are also listed here.
136. Select one of the YNP-10m
DEMs, open the Layer page, select the 10m layer,
and Enable.
137. Save the project and render
a preview.
138. The Status window
will show that Shadow calculations have been added to the render
equation.
139. We may not need them here,
but more accurate Shadows are rendered using Fractal Depth
Maps. Go to the Terrain Parameter Editor and select Fractal Depth Maps.
140. Fractal Depth Maps are calculated
using enabled Render Job Cameras, so let's make sure the Lake
View Camera is part of a Render Job. Go to the Render Task
Mode and expand the Render Jobs category. Open the
YNP Render Job.
141. It's using the YNP Main
Camera, so change it to the Lake View Camera.
142. Go back to the Terrain Parameter Editor and Create Fractal Maps.
143. Start with frame 0
and end at frame 0.
144. WCS will make a Maximum
Fractal Depth suggestion, but we'll change ours to 5
to bring out some detail in the foreground water.
145. Open another Lake View
Camera view in the upper right view.
146. Save the project and render
a preview.
147. There's not much difference
in these preview renders. We have picked up more black polys
in the water and beach. This usually means that Shadow Offset
is too low. Go back to the Shadow Editor
Cast Shadows page. Increase the Shadow Offset from
Terrain value to 1 meter.
148. Save the project and render
the left Lake View for comparison. That takes care of our black
polygons.
149. By default, Shadows are
recalculated for each render. That's good, since changes to Lights,
foliage, and terrain mean Shadow changes. Once we're done moving
Lights and our foliage is set, Use File will calculate
the Shadow Map once, save it, and use it for subsequent renders.
This saves a lot of render time. Shadow Offset is not part of
the saved Shadow Map. You can change the offset value in Use
File mode and render without regenerating the Shadow Map.
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