Does anyone have tips on how I could make a wave reflection lighting effect on an ocean floor? The type of wavy reflections you see on the bottom of a pool. I could draw each line individually, but there must be another way with Zbrush. Thanks.
what about using a alpha as a fog effect.
Another trick you might want to try is using a material for your ocan floor that has noise added to it. I did this in an underwater scene I was working on. Try editing the noise graph in the material until you get a look that you want. You may need to use one of the double shaders to get two layers of noise.
Another method would be to paint the effect using an alpha of a caustic light pattern.
If you can find or make the basic ‘wave caustic’ pattern as a greyscale alpha, you could use the DragRect stroke and a low RGB intensity to draw it once, and then use ReplayLast Stroke button to replay the same stroke several times until the effect is strong enough. If painting the effect with this method, you would want to use two different Tools: the ColorizeBrush tool and the HightlighterBrushII tool. The ColorizeBrush would be used to alter the color, changing the gray-green mud of the ocean bottom to a blue-green color, for example. Then the HighlighterBrushII tool would be used to lighten the new color so that at least portions of it are possibly as light as bright white. The ReplayLast Stroke could be handy because the same stroke can be repeated several times at low RGB intensity to first build up color with the ColorizeBrush tool selected, and then to lighten the same pattern with the HighlighterBrushII by pressing the STROKE:ReplayLast button several more times. The Alpha palette has Noise and Blur options that could be used to change the affect these two brushes have on the surface you are painting on, so that the bright highlights are not uniform. Of course, you might have to repeat the above process several times to spread the pattern over a large area, but that’s painting.
I got the basic caustic painting process from TVeyes here, and I used it to moderately good effect here.
I created this rough ‘wave caustic’ alpha by baking a layer with the ZBrush grid texture applied on the layer. Then I utilized a 3DPlane applied with Refraction at around 50-70, Refraction Blur: 2. The 3DPlane had various Mask/Inflate/Smooth deformations applied to it, and it was Divided several times along the way until it was maxed out on polys.
I baked the layer and did the same thing again using a sphere that was also similarly deformed.
If I had started with a less uniform pattern, the final result would probably be about perfect.
Thanks for all the suggestions… Jay, I think your idea is exactly what Im looking for… Ill try out your idea on an underwater scene I want to work on soon… Thanks for the Tut!
Really a nice result, Jaycephus!
What interests me is the wonderful volumelight from above. How can that be managed? At the moment i´m experimenting with lights, not reaching the effects I want.
Perhabs there is an special link about this topic?
greets!
PS: perhabs Pilou, the master of ZBC-Links 
It is almost all painting. The fog is a rendered effect.
I placed a ‘floor’ and a back wall in the scene. The purpose of the back wall was to provide a layer of pixols that would receive the fog coloring when baking.
The two items I placed were green/blue in color. The fog is green/blue. I used the technique described above to paint the caustic light effect on the sea floor. Then I rendered with fog on and baked the layer.
On another layer I created a quick alpha in greyscale that looked like rays of light. I grabbed this layer with the MRGBGrabber tool and converted the resulting texture to an alpha. Then I used the HighlighterIIBrush tool and the DragRect stroke with this alpha on the original layer. I drew the light-ray alpha 3 times with low RGB on the layer in 3 slightly different places to multiply the effect.
Hi, Jaycephus !
It´s not that difficult I thought. But the result speaks for itself! 
Thanks for the explanation!
Great tips here !!! Thx for sharing !!! 
And why not also add some colored “lights” with some regulatings in wished place ?
Pilou
fantastico tips, Jay - and an excellent image - those rays are grrrreat!
- juandel