In this THINK tutorial we are learning how to use the Maxwell displacement maps. This is a single scene inspired by Pamukkale ('Cotton Castle' in Turkish) which Turkish people describe as the 8th Wonder of the World.

In the zip file you will find the final scene, textures and a source PSD file. In the PSD file you can find several layers: Color, Displacement and several layers for water. We will use these layers to export to .ai ( Adobe Ilustrator ®). These files can be exported in some 3d applications, such as Maya, and we will use them to create the water geometry.

Once you have exported all maps, you can open Maya and create the scene. The most difficult task is to adjust the height of the water levels. To do this you can use a Maya node utility called “Height Field”. This node can visualize the displacement map, open the “attribute editor” and assign the map to the Displacement parameter. It is possible that the size will not fit in the scale of Maxwell displacement object, so you may have to scale it.

Note: Do not scale in Y axis. Set to 1.

The Height scale value from Height Field Node Utility is adjusted to 1. Select absolute height apply and set the height to 1 ( make sure you have the Global Scale Factor in Render Globals set to 1, because otherwise you will have to multiply the height value by the same factor.

Now you can adjust the water surfaces to the real displacement.