This is my ongoing thread documenting my progress through the 2021 collab.
Above I posted some pre-alpha previews of possible directions the look of our creek could steer towards. None of them are intended as final result and are mere WIP showcases to help in making further design decisions.
I tried several different approaches to simulating flowing water with a toonish look. I used the Ocean Modifier, Dynamic Paint (set to vertex color), a flowmap and several different shader configurations - some based on shaders from Blendermarket and Gumroad.
Flowmaps didn't help as much as I was hoping for, they might still be worthwhile for collisions though.
Dynamic Paint is an option for collision with rocks etc as well. I also tried an Ocean Modifier - great for simulating waves.
A full fluid simulation with Mantaflow is IMO a bit too much for our project, especially within Eevee.
Conclusion: ATM I think it best to use a shader like the ones I created above and use Dynamic Paint or Flowmaps for collisions and add some slight surface movement via an Ocean Modifier set to shallow water.
Planned next steps: As shown in the first video, collisions still need some looking into - friendly advice welcome. Reflections and transparency will be (re-)implemented in the next iterations.
LOVING what I'm seeing elcangrejo! I'll give you a proper grading + feedback ASAP, but I just wanted you to know I see your work and it makes me happy 🤩
so compelling!
I signed up for this asset as your second. no experience with water simulations, so I’m glad to be learning from what you’re doing
Thank you aubrie! I'm mostly using what I find in tutorials and online and try to wrap my head around all of it. I'm looking forward to working with you. Tell me if you need anything :-)
elcangrejo
My team is investigating the issue of water falling in a mini waterfall from the blades of the waterwheel. I guess we should see how we combine the techniques. That research would also be useful, I suppose, for the mini-waterfalls in the river that would be outside the camera. At the moment I am looking for information. What I have found so far is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZsfr5f273c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im3SA3MSzcw
elcangrejo Like I said earlier: Very impressed with your work for week 1. The resourcefulness is huge and your experimentation is extremely promising.
I really don't have any constructive notes to give other than "keep doing what you're doing." With regard to collisions, for the final result I'd like to see "edge foam" present; the white water effect that emphasizes collision with the ground and rocks. I'll tell you what I told pprocyonlotor:
I've looked into techniques for this a couple times and have never been able to do it procedurally with shader nodes. Maybe there's a way to do it but 🤷♂️. Alternatively you could try adding a dedicated strip of geometry along the edges of the water (slightly above the water) with it's own shader to simulate edge foam. This guide seems insightful (though not with Bender).
If you could further explore collisions + edge foam in week 2, that'd be great!
Thanks for your encouraging feedback and input! I'll get in touch with pprocyonlotor and hopefully produce some nice collisions and foam together :)
Some collisions for you beautiful people. This uses Dynamic Paint and Brushes.
This is still heavily WIP since I'm working with a shader from Blendermarket which needs a lot of tweaking and digging to get it right :)
Shape, form, color, speed and everything else are costumisable . Especially the shape of the foam might not be everybody's taste.
With this setup I'm having some trouble making the water follow a curved plane perfectly but I'm confident about that. Since @theluthier liked the lines of foam in my last submission I'll try to get this reimplemented.
I loved how pprocyonlotor created his collisions from something as simple as AO and I will try his technique out for my next iteration.
Oh, btw, pprocyonlotor , @theluthier 
spikeyxxx , aubrie - what do you think about adding one or two fish below our creek's surface?
This is looking awesome! That dynamic paint approach seems to be working really well 👍
This is still heavily WIP since I'm working with a shader from Blendermarket which needs a lot of tweaking and digging to get it right :)
Which shader are you using? I'll ask that you avoid using paid products for this since it means the legality of sharing our final scene with everyone would be questionable, but if you need help implementing some part of it from scratch I bet I can help you out.
I just posted a longer response to pprocyonlotor 's WIP thread about the kind of shading that I'll be looking for, so give that a read and let me know if you have any questions or think of a better way of approaching it. The TL;DR of it is that we can't use emission shaders because we need it to receive shadows from the house.
Full points for week 2. Keep it up!
I was using a paid shader, yes. You have a point concerning the sharing and stuff, @jlampel .I was wondering if that might be a problem as well. So it's good this is clarified. I still think it has some great potential as a template. Can we continue this conversation on Discord? :)
That's a cool method spikeyxxx ! That's certainly an option and I'm open to using it, but I'm not immediately convinced that it would give better results than regular shaders.
@jlampel it is not that I am in favor of this, but I just didn't want to exclude Emission Shaders to begin with :)
The main thing is to stay close to the style of the Artwork and that everybody is using the 'same' shading method.
