I am currently using After Effects CS4 (will be upgrading to CS6 in a couple of days) and I am currently trying out a test project using basic lighting animation. However, one element I want to create is a puddle of rain water on the ground. I was wondering if anybody here could advise on creating a puddle and its effects in After Effects, such as wave movements, reflection (particularly background elements) and whether I should use the basic pen tool or use some sort of diffusion maps. If I wanted to make it a little more complex, then how could I create the illusion of rain hitting the ground plane without it being mearly looking like a filter in front of the screen and have it influence the puddle?
If any of you would be able to point me out to some other tutorials on the web, I would be very grateful for that.
