rain effects that create puddles or wet ground

Development Rendering
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1

for university i need to create a set of wet particles that interact with the world, can anyone point me towards a tutorial that teaches how to make a rain effect that makes the material it hits wet looking or creates puddles.

2

I don’t have tutorial pointers right now, but I could make you a list of things you can do/look into, if you want to.

3

that would help thank you

4

Here is how I would approach this:

  1. Create rain effect.
  2. Create a layered material: Blend two materials (water & something else) using a displacement-/heightmap. (Check out the SetMaterialAttributes and BlendMaterialAttributes nodes) Use a scalar parameter to modify the amount of blend and modify that scalar parameter using a Dynamic Material Instance.
  3. Track the amount of rain.
  4. Maybe add a water plane at the bottom of the map, that slowly moves up eventually clipping through the landscape when it rained enough.
  5. With panning textures and some math you could add flow directions to the water material depending on the direction of the surface.
  6. If the rain should be localised, you can use a Vector Parameter in the Dynamic Material, track the rain’s position, and use a distance field/custom math to only blend the water material in where it rains.

I hope this helps a bit, feel free to ask more questions.

EDIT: You can obviously also use the Dynamic Instance and change the specularity that way

5

I’m curious: did you figure this out?