Modeling the Water Cube
Step 1. Open a new Blender file and press A on your keyboard to select all default objects, then press the X or DELETE key to delete all objects.
Step 2. Press SHIFT+A in the 3D viewport and add a new MESH> CUBE.
Step 3. Select the cube and press TAB into edit mode.
With the cube selected, press S and number pad 5 key and then press ENTER.
Now the cube will scale as below.
Step 4. With the cube selected press G and number pad 5 key and then press ENTER. Now the cube will stay on top of the grid.
Step 5. Press 3 to enter the face select mode and select the top face of the cube.
Make sure you’re still in edit mode.
Step 6. Right-click and select Subdivide. In the subdivide menu enter 20 for the Number of Cuts.
Step 7. With all surfaces selected hold the CTRL key and press the – key on the number pad to reduce the face selection.
Step 8. Go to the object data and add a new vertex group. Rename vertex groups as water faces. Click on the assign button.
Step 9. Go to Modifiers and a new DEFORM> DISPLACE modifier.
Step 10. In the displace modifier add a new texture and rename it as water texture.
Step 11. Select the texture tab to visit texture options.
In the texture, options select texture type as CLOUDS.
Step 12. Go back to the Modifiers tab. In the displace modifier options click on the vertex group bar and select water faces.
Step 13. Now in the 3D viewport press TAB to exit the edit mode. Our water pool is ready now.
Step 14. If you like to further improve your appearance. Press TAB again to enter the edit mode and select our water faces and press CTRL+T to triangle the faces.
Now tab again to exit the edit mode and you can play with displace modifier mid-level and strength to get the appearance as you wish.
In this case, I will keep the mid-level as 0.5 and change the strength value to 0.5.
Now our water pool modeling part is ready.
Apply Materials to the water pool
In the previous chapter, we complete our water pool modeling so it’s time to add some colors to our 3D model.
Step 1. Select the cube and go to Martials options. Then click on NEW to add new material. Rename the material water.
Step 2. Select the base color in the popup color wheel select any color you wish to apply or you can select the same color as mine (in the color picker select Hex and enter this code ####).
Step 3. Change the below values in the material tab.
Specular 0.9
Roughness 0
IOR 0.933
Transmission 1
Transmission Roughness 0.092
Step 4. Press Z and select render. Now you will see the pre-rendered view of the object.
Lighting the water pool
In this chapter, we will learn how to add lights to the scene.
Step 1. Press SHIFT+A to and add LIGHT> AREA.
Step 2. With the light selected, press G and Z then type 20 on the number pad and press ENTER. Now light will stay on top of the cube.
Step 3. Press S and type number pad 5 and press ENTER. Now the light will scale up.
Step 4. Change Pivot Point to 3D cursor, Make sure the 3D cursor is at the center of the 3D viewport If not press SHIFT+S and select curse to the world origin.
Step 5. Select the area light (click the center point of the area light to select light). Light will be colored as orange as below.
Step 6. Apply the following for the area light placement.
With the light selected press R and X then type 45 on the number pad and press ENTER.
With the light selected press R and Z then type -45 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Step 8. With light selected go to object data and change the power value to 500W.
Now our lighting setup is ready.
Rendering
Before starting the rendering, I have divided this into two parts.
Part 1 – Setup Render Scene.
To set up our render scene we have to add a Plane and camera to the 3D viewport.
Step 1. Press SHIT+A to add a new MESH> PLANE.
Step 2. With the plane selected press G and X then type -45 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Step 3. With the plane selected press G and Y then type -45 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Step 4. In the 3D viewport press 3 on the number pad, this will change the 3D viewport to the right orthographic view. Then press SHIFT+A to add a new CAMERA.
Step 5. HOLD the middle mouse button and drag it to go back to the 3D viewport perspective view.
Step 6. Select the camera and press R and Z then type 45 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Step 7. With the camera selected press S and type 5 on the number pad and enter. This makes the camera screen size.
Step 8. Select the camera and enter the below steps.
Press G and X then type 30 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Press G and Y then type 30 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Press G and z then type 5 on the number pad and press ENTER.
Camera setup is ready. Press number pad 0 to view the camera mode.
Now you will see our water pool in the center of the camera screen.
Press number pad 0 again to exit the camera view.
Part 2 – Setup the Render Engine
Step 1. GO to the render options and select the render engine as cycles. Select device as the GPU Compute If you don’t have a GPU then keeps this in CPU.
Step 2. Enter 512 for render samples. You can change image quality using the render samples value, the higher the value the more quality of the image but increases the render time. Add DE noising
Step 3. Press F12 on your keyboard and it will start rendering the image.