Technical Tutorial- Water Light

I will be teaching you how to make it look like an object is underwater by using a light to reflect waves. The purpose of this is to make it look like any object is moving underwater and the waves are crossing over it. This skill is good to know because it is a cool detail that could make your project look a lot better. This could help any animator trying to recreate a scene underwater or any type of project based underwater.

First what you have to do is get your object that you want to be underwater.

Second you make a spotlight and place it in front of your object so that it covers your whole object.

Then you click on the spotlight and click the checkered box next to color this will open up a window.

In the window click 2D and then you will see the water texture and click on it.

With the water texture applied to your spotlight start messing with the settings to make it look right.

Go to the color balance option and start messing with the grain to make the waves a different color.

After that messing with the setting you can add a keyframe to the wave time and start it at 0 and then at the end of your animation put another keyframe for the wave time so that the waves move across the object. The final product should look like this.