I use both, but mostly postworked in Photoshop. To me, the hardest part about doing water in mandelbulb 3D is isolating the water area so you can apply your reflections to only that part of the image. So what you have to do is isolate the water area to a single color. Then only apply reflections to that color. Obviously, that color can't appear anywhere else in the image. And as a rule, the less colors you use in your image, the easier it is to isolate the water color.



The way I make the water is to use the HeightMapIFS formula. I use the default map number 1014. It looks like leather if you click on it in the map folder, but it works quite well for water. Set the frequency of the waves with the X and Y Scale sliders to get nice waves. You need some light reflecting off the waves to get nice reflections, so you have to play with the viewing angle quite a bit. Use the H scale setting for wave height. Keep the H scale setting low, like 0.005 or 0.05 or something. To get the color of the water isolated, open the diffuse color swath, (click on the color bar). The color adjustment window opens. Now adjust the colors by moving the color bars or changing the colors of the color bars to isolate the water color. This can take quite a bit of time, and like I said, the fewer colors, the easier it is. Each color bar is in three sections. Once you isolate the water color, hover your mouse over the top section of the water color bar, and adjust the slider all the way to the right for full reflections. (255) Make the center color something intermediate, but not a dark color. Now set all the other color bar top sections to 000 by sliding the slider all the way to the left, and sett all the center sections to a dark shade color.



At this point, you should get reflections only on the water (for the most part) if rendered. And also you will have to fiddle with other things to fine tune it all. Maybe add a positional light to help with reflections, etc.