Ripple Rain is a new application that enables users of major 3d rendering packages to create rain and water impact ripples without the need for an expensive particle system. The magic behind RippleRain is conceptually quite simple: animated textures and bump maps. Water impact ripples are created by animating a bump map which would typically be painted onto a hortizontal plane. Ripples are created simply by defining and placing an emitter on the layout screen. You control every aspect of ripple generation and movement with a large (but not unmanagable) set of parameters.
Rain is created through the use of alpha channeled animated textures that are placed in parallel and perpendicular to the plane painted with water ripples. Lining up all of those vertical planes is a snap with three different styles of placement guides that aid in setup and keyframing.
And when rain is needed, it's just a click away. Turn it on, tell it how fast rain falls and RippleRain will generate one rain drop for each emitter.
It's that easy. Ripple Rain does the work of figuring out where a rain drop needs to be on a frame by frame basis so that when it reaches the bottom, an impact ripple is created.
