Replicating Classic '90s Anime Water Shimmer Effect In Blender

Technical & VFX Artist Hazel Stagner, also known as GlaireDaggers, wanted to see if she could pull off that classic sparkling water effect, once achieved with practical methods, using only Blender. To simulate this look, she used a plane with a noise-based displacement map slightly perturbed along the Z-axis to create surface variation. Then, she lit it with a focused spotlight to generate highlights and applied the Glare node to introduce the lens flare effect.

Hazel shared a look at the 3D viewport, where she set the base color of the plane's material to white, making it easier to visualize the displacement map in action, even though the final render uses a black surface. She also included the plane's material node graph and the compositor setup used to achieve the final effect.

And here's how the effect would look when added to a scene:

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