Refraction

I'm just gonna go through the basics I leave the rest to you.

Fire up blender with you're standard scene (add a lamp if there isn't one there already I advise a Sun lamp).

Scale the plane you start with by 5 along all axis

Add a second plane and move it up about 0.1 so that it is no longer on the same face as plane 1

Add a new material to the plane1

goto the texture window and add a checkered image to the plane with Xrepeat and Yrepeat set to 5

Move the camera to a suitable position and then add an Empty at the same spot as where the camera is.

Now add a new material to plane2 and then go to the texture window.

Add a new texture the EnvMap type, Ob: Empty, and make sure you set Anim and not static (since I'm gonna show you how to animate this refraction.)

<IMPORTANT>Go back to the material window and set the SizeX, SizeY, and SizeZ to -1.000 and set mapping type to Refl.</IMPORTANT>

Test render.

Now this is where you start wondering what's wrong? at this stage you can either set the EnvMap-Texture to Static, render again, and then rotate the camer 180'o or you can do the following.

Select your whole scene apart from the camera and the Empty, Alt-D it, and then move it (with the empty) over so that it is out of the way (beware of mean lights...).

Now select your "second scene" (the empty included) and flip it with s-y.

Finished. You now have an animatable (spelling?) refraction setup. A good thing to try just to get you started is to add a wave effect to plane1 (SMALL WAVES think height=0.010).

And another thing, if you are going to try doing this with a round object don't forget to put the empty at the center of the sphere.

Q: I followed this tutorial perfectly but the checkers just switch colour where plane1 should be

A: Set the SizeX: -1.000 to 1.000, don't look at me, I don't know why this happened... but from what I've learnt SizeX: -1,000 is required...

Q2: Now plane1 has dissapeared and all i see are checkers

A2: that's the whole point you idiot.

Q3: when I add a bumpmap texture to the plane nothing changes

A3: make sure you have the bumpmap texture before EnvMap if it is after then nothing will happen.

Q4: Who do you love?

A4: love this girl in my class named Ste... wait a minute, that's none of your business.