283 replies to this topic

[Pureon]

Agreed, that last screenshot looks awesome

What's wrong with the Mediterranean Coves map? Strange that it would be different to the other maps.

[zoot]

Pureon, on 15 July 2012 - 03:54 PM, said:

What's wrong with the Mediterranean Coves map? Strange that it would be different to the other maps.

Good question. It could be a weird (but not necessarily faulty) piece of geometry or map setting that throws the renderer off in some way, but I don't know what exactly.

[wraitii]

I'll take a look at that in the debugger. Since the water code doesn't really rely on anything else in the game, it's completely possible that there are special cases I haven't yet considered that would crash. In particular since I'm not the most proficient programmer.

[plumo]

That last screenshot is indeed amazing !

A more realistic transition from the sand to the water and this could be a photo

[luziferius]

yeah, it reminds me of that Unigine tropics benchmark, really nice
when do we get that into main/trunk? A11 or more likely A12?

[zoot]

I suspect the water coloring stuff can go in rather quickly if the team wants, because it is mainly done in shaders and therefore have no implications for the rest of the engine.

[Mythos_Ruler]

If it doesn't break anything, and it's configurable, then I don't see why it can't go in, asap.

[wraitii]

It breaks every map in that every map's setting will probably have to be adjusted if we use some changes. If you want to push quick changes, it's probably better to use myconid's watertest or biwater branches, which are cheap improvements.

However, depending on when Alpha 11 is set to be released, this may still make alpha 11.

[Mythos_Ruler]

wraitii, on 15 July 2012 - 08:06 PM, said:

It breaks every map in that every map's setting will probably have to be adjusted if we use some changes. If you want to push quick changes

I'm willing to spend the hour it will take to adjust the scenarios. That's not a big deal.

[wraitii]

I take it from TRAC that Alpha 11 is for mid-late august. I'm fairly confident this should take no more than 2 weeks to wrap up.

To give a todo list:
-Need to fix all and any segfaults/bad memory accesses.
-Need to have waves (I'm on that but for some reason it doesn't work I'll investigate).
-Need to redo the scenario and random map water settings (probably quick, but necessary).
-Should try to definitely fix some border issues on the super fancy shader. Since I distort the depth buffer, it gives a few quirky pixels. It's certainly fixable, however.

Edited by wraitii, 15 July 2012 - 08:27 PM.

[Gen.Kenobi]

@zoot: Can you rephrase your question about Blender?

[Wijitmaker]

I've seen comments here, or somewhere else that there is some complaints about the quality of the water texture. I've taken the liberty of regenerating 60 frames of animated looping water. The photoshop plugin outputs a color map in the RGB (maybe useful for adding white caps to waves?) and then uses the alpha channel to store a bump map. If I gave you 60 of the attached files would that be something you could work with... or would you need that bump map extracted and turned into a normal map for you?

I was also thinking... I could generate more animated maps if they might be useful? Waterfall or maybe an animated caustic light map that could be applied to the terrain below the water?

Attached Files

•  water01.zip   97.04K   11 downloads

[wraitii]

I should be able to convert it to normal maps, though it might take me a bit of time, but that's not really a problem.
For other textures... If you find a way to make the caustic light map nice, that would be interesting (as a decal), because I don't think I can reuse the trick I'm using for foam.

[zoot]

For caustics, I submit that they can potentially be done in real-time from a heightmap of the water surface. That would make it easier for modders to get consistent results.

Here is a video based on the technique described in this paper:

[zoot]

Gen.Kenobi, on 16 July 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

@zoot: Can you rephrase your question about Blender?

Can Blender simulate water like shown in the video above and export a heightmap of the water surface at each frame? Thinking less about oceans and more about ponds and pools.

[Wijitmaker]

wraitii, on 16 July 2012 - 06:08 AM, said:

I should be able to convert it to normal maps, though it might take me a bit of time, but that's not really a problem.

Ok, sure, here you go: http://www.wildfireg...it/newwater.zip

[Gen.Kenobi]

zoot, on 16 July 2012 - 09:52 AM, said:

Can Blender simulate water like shown in the video above and export a heightmap of the water surface at each frame? Thinking less about oceans and more about ponds and pools.

Sure. I'll have to look into the exporting of height maps, but it's possible.


Gonna need to watch a few tutorials first, to get me going. But what exactly are you looking for?

[zoot]

Well, it is purely hypothetical at this point, but if we have animated heightmaps, I assume we can do all sorts of optical effects on the fly, including normal mapping and caustics (per the paper linked above). That way we can have unique water animations for every pond, fountain, waterfall etc., complete with reflections, shadows, caustics and so on, with minimal work. We could also use it to create wakes, like suggested by myconid and quantumstate here, with full optical animations.

[Gen.Kenobi]

I see this working mostly for ships, as you said. However to get realistic results for each ship, I would need to get the each model, including the rows, with it's animation.

[zoot]

Why not fountains?



Just putting the basic ocean water animation in the bottom there might look a bit strange.