Creating Underwater Environments in Revit and Enscape

Simulating the effects of underwater lighting is useful for exploring aquarium designs, themed environments and even film and stage projects.

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A few years ago I received an email from a uniquely talented team asking for best practice guidance to integrate Rhino and Revit for the design of a new aquarium project. Resolving geometry was actually the easy part. What really stuck with me was trying to recreate the emotion and experience that comes from exploring underwater environments in Enscape. Fast forward a few years and a few more underwater scenes and it's time to present a step by step guide. :)

I grew up in Florida (east coast of the US, all the way down to the right) and spent many summer snorkeling in clear, spring fed lakes, rivers and oceans. Something about the saturated colors, muted sound and quiet streams of shimmering light remains a formative memory. If you're ever in the north Florida area don't pass up a day trip to Ichetucknee Springs State Park.

How do we simulate this kind of experience in Revit and Enscape? Let's break it down to the create the sum of the parts for the geometry, materials and lighting (and sound - but that's for another day).

First of all, we're going to need a big tank. Create your own or use this one (Revit 2020).

If you're going to create your own, be sure to use the right material for the clear aquarium glass. I've selected Air as the refraction value because it'll more closely simulate acrylic rather than glass.

Next, let's create the water. We'll want the color of the water to appear to influence the geometry inside the tank, so rather than use a thin surface at the top of the pool we'll create the water as a much thicker solid from the surface to the bottom of the tank. For the Water Type I've selected Generic Sea / Ocean.

Now we're going to create the sandy bottom of the tank using the Site tool. Don't worry about the extents of the site - we'll trim the site later. Just create the overall site and exceed the edges of the tank.

Next, split the surface to exclude anything outside the tank. Select Split Surface from the Massing & Site tab and select the surface. In a plan view use the Pick Lines tool to select the inner edges of the tank and then select Finish Edit Mode. Now the surface has been split into two parts. Select and delete the area of the site outside of the tank.

Select the topography and isolate for the next step. While the site is selected pick the Edit Surface tool. Add elevation points to the interior of the site to raise and lower sections of the topography to create interesting contours; high regions and low valleys.

In my file the boundary elevation is at 2'. Some of the interior points are higher and some are lower but everything is above the bottom of the tank.

Now that the geometry of the topo is complete we should select a suitable material for the sand. But the material of the sand alone isn't sufficient. Look closely at the image below and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Notice how the light plays on the surface of the sand as the light is reflected from the surface of the water above? Let's simulate this effect for the surface of the sand. To do this we'll download a seamless texture from SketchUp Texture Club (a great source for Revit materials)!

This seamless texture of reflecting water and light is perfect. But the color isn't right for simulating a sandy bottom of our tank.

Open the water texture with your preferred photo editing tool. Adjust the Hue, Saturation and Lightness of the image to simulate a more sand-like color.

Next, select the topo surface and assign your new sand and light texture to the geometry.

Here's the result! :)

And with the rest of the tank and water visible. Notice how the color of the water is also having an effect on the color of the sand by giving the scene a blue-like tint.

Let's add a few more features. First there's a nice group of stones in the Enscape Asset Library. But the scale is wrong when placed in the tank.

Did you know that you can change the scale of Enscape Assets? It doesn't make sense for most content like people, cars, furniture, etc. But it's useful for landscaping features like rocks and planting. To do this, select the Enscape Asset and change type parameter for Height to 8'. The rocks will appear larger in Revit (and Enscape).

Sand and rocks are great, but what about other underwater features? There's a nice anchor over here at Revit City. Download and open the family and tilt the geometry so it'll appear to lean against the stones when you place the anchor in the tank. Changing the rotation and elevation of the anchor will also help it appear to rest more naturally if it's also covered with a bit of sand at the base of the anchor.

Alright - it's been long enough. Let's start Enscape and see what we've got so far!

We're getting closer! As you navigate in Enscape you'll notice the water appears to shimmer on the surface on the sand and stones. But we need to exaggerate the lighting hotspots like the image below. That's right - sometimes we need to exaggerate reality a bit to get the desired effect. :) We're going to do this by focusing the ambient light into natural looking patches on the surfaces of the sand and stones.

To do this we're going to 1) build a top on the tank to block the ambient light and then 2) we're going create small openings in the top of the tank to focus the incoming rays of light. Here's the top of the tank - a simple floor with a concrete texture.

The small openings will be created as voids by using a Floor Based family. I've found that elliptical voids look more natural when light passes through. In this example I've created a single sketch in one quadrant and then mirrored / copied the results into the remaining quadrants.

Here's the result in the family editor.

Load the floor based family into the tank project and place many instances on the top of the tank. Don't be too "careful" placing the void family, but rather allow for some randomness to occur. Here's the result in the top of the tank.

And here's the result in Enscape. Simply change the time of day so the sun is nearly directly overhead.

If you find there's too much direct light streaming into the tank, increase the Clouds in the Visual Settings > Atmosphere > Clouds > Density setting to 80% or so.

The light appears much more subdued and natural as it's being filtered from above.

What about low light conditions? Place a few Studio Lights about 50' above the top of the tank to simulate artificial lighting. Here's the result in Revit.

Change the time in Enscape to the evening so the ambient sunlight fades and the artificial studio lighting in Revit becomes more prominent. Here's the result in Enscape. Spooky! :)

What about simulating the effect of volumetric lighting? Imagine seeing seeing beams of light shining through a window into a dimly lit room. Volumetric Lighting is the effect of beams of light shining through an environment and the result of light reflecting within an atmosphere such as dust, moisture, water, etc. As you can imagine, volumetric lighting can be used to create very heightened dramatic effects. Once again - from Finding Nemo:

At the moment Enscape only renders volumetric light from ambient light - not artificial lights. To simulate volumetric light we're going to have to simulate the atmosphere that's intersecting the light source. Let's do this with a spotlight shaped light.

In the image below, the yellow light source (right) is intersected by 24 very thin (1/64") planes that extend beyond the source of the light. These planes will help simulate the "atmosphere" for the spotlight to intersect and illuminate.

The material of the intersecting planes is white, but we're going to use a pattern of white dots as a cutout so that only the white dots remain visible.

Here's a close up detail of the finely space pattern of dots on the intersecting planes.

Of course lights have to come from a source. And the SketchUp Warehouse is here to help. This is a great model of a submarine that'll suffice for our underwater scene. Simply download and open the model in SketchUp, export to DWG and finally import / scale in the Revit light family.

I've embellished the sub by adding some self-illuminated geometry for additional effect. Here's the result in a low light condition.

Finally, let's put it all together: geometry, materials and lighting. Here's the result during the day.

And here's the result in low light. If only the Enscape Asset Library contained fish for our aquarium project! :)

That's it! Fast, easy and beautiful results with Enscape.

If you'd like to download and use the Revit project created while making this Enscape tutorial it's over?here (Revit 2020).

I sincerely hope this tips and tricks article helps you get the most your of?Revit?and?Enscape. If you have any questions just send me a message on Linkedin or in the comments field below.?Enjoy! :)

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