ungoliant

got it working. apparently after adding the reflection, you need to boost up the light level much higher to see the original texture. Additionally, proximity to the reflective surface seems to have a major effect, which is difficult to deal with when your stuff is in a skybox. Adjusting the light level doesn't affect the reflection itself though, which is a blessing. I gotta say, the overall effect looks amazing when you get the lighting right. Been working for about 6 hours trying to put the finishing touches on the skybox, but I can't seem get a soft horizon edge because of the stupid clouds and their reflections on the water as they pass over it. Well, I can get it soft, but either it ruins the clouds, or it ruins the water/moonlight effect. Its going to drive me insane.

hmmmm. maybe i'll try incorporating that. Whats up with the 3rd SS btw? why is the moon in that sewer? edit: ahh i see whats going on here. The fake reflect is using a cubemap, hence the moon. I'm doing dynamic reflection. I know this can work though, but its got something to do with alpha channel.... the mirrored reflection and the diffuse / bump need to be like half transparent on top of eachother, but I'm too noob with material shaders to figure out the solution.

ok, I've almost got it. It seems that the parameters to renderMirrorMap directly influence the size of this box..... this is friggin weird because most of the time without any diffuse / bumpmap the reflection by itself works just fine with the default values... my screen res 1152 x 864 doesn't make it fullscreen either.

not experienced enough to even know how to use blend modulate. But: it ALMOST works. take a look at this screenie: if you look close, you can see that theres a box on the bottom left corner that takes up 1/4 of the screen, and it has the effect that i want!!!! I put the moon reflection cut by the top part of this box, just to illustrate it. Now... If i can get that overlay fullscreen.........

that was what I did with the original attempt that had a seperate patch underneath the surface with the reflection stage + fresnel. For whatever reason, that still blocked out the diffuse / bumpmap of the top surface, although the reflection still displayed with heat haze(which was in the top surface). very aggravating. why would the diffuse / bump maps be lost, but not the heat haze?!

The following is the newest incarnation of my water surface texture, and I can't seem to get it right. The whole point is to overlay a reflection of the sky on top of the refracting water, this can be achieved, but the original diffusemap / bumpmap is lost and only the reflecting portion remains. textures/water_source/water_top { qer_editorimage textures/water_source/water_grey noshadows { blend diffusemap map textures/water_source/water_grey colored } { blend bumpmap map textures/water_source/water_green_local translate 0.01 * sintable[time * 0.2], 0.01 * sintable[time * 0.22] scale 0.5,0.5 } { program heatHaze.vfp vertexParm 0 time * 0.1 , time * 0.1 // scroll vertexParm 1 0.5 //magnitude fragmentMap 0 _currentRender fragmentMap 1 textures/sfx/vp1 fragmentMap 2 textures/water_source/vp_water } { blend blend mirrorRenderMap 512 512 translate 0.5, 0.5 scale 0.5, 0.5 } } I used to have a seperate fresnel material that went under this with the mirrorRenderMap stage, but I scrapped it as it complicated things too much. Anyway, can someone tell me how I can keep the original water_grey diffuse and the bumpmap? edit: tried setting alpha 0.5 to the blend blend stage, didn't work. tried putting blend blend stage first, then setting alpha 0.5 to the blend diffusemap stage, that didn't work either, just shows the diffuse and bump maps with no reflection. Can't seem to get them both to display together.

success!! well, almost. Its still got some underlying issues I need to sort out, but I think its still post-worthy. Enjoy

DOH! *facepalm* maybe i should check out some of the new stuff in the 1.02 update, if anything was added, then.

I hope those aren't difficulty modes for the ghostbusters game you've been pining over... for GBA?

hmmmmmmm, also, as long as I'm learning how to edit material shaders, I might even edit my beach texture's "wet" areas with a new specular.

LMAO i need to mix chasing vodka with beer and TDM mapping more often. I just came up with the most successful off-the-wall solution ever. Paint the bottom of the sky box with my chosen water texture. paint the water in my FM as portal_sky. Perfect synchronization and blending all the way to the horizon, even if my ocean entity is only 15 feet long, and even from 10000 feet in the air. LOL :laugh: Props to Fid and the contest designers for keeping the restrictions of the vert contest, as I never would have needed to create this technique otherwise. yay creative solutions!! Now on to particle effects.... need some giant waves crashing and spraying on those rocks. Then I shall post a teaser video of the epicness of the bottom floor of my vert contest entry, and it shall rival Bikerdudes cave video. It will be good. edit: the ambient ocean sound is mostly set up already, but i plan to include some looping gull cries and distant echoing buoy clangs (after i learn how to create sound shaders). Additionally, if i can fanagle it, 2 more half-cylinder moving wave patches with textures identical to (but not) the skybox that translate backwards at the speed it moves forwards (so it doesn't look dumb) to help justify the giant ocean spray and make the tide more believable. First patch will be a bobber similar to the whole ocean entity (which is now very small thanks to the skybox technique) that comes up and down, second patch will move forward towards the coast directly from that position (supposed to look like a single wave rising and then moving inland), and then teleport back to the origin after hitting the shore, and repeating the process.

can anyone direct me towards a beginner friendly guide to editing material files to get customized cool effects out of existing resources (if one exists)? I have the very basic elements down now, but a lot of the articles on modwiki for usage of certain global and stage keywords are a bit cryptic, and not beginner friendly. What I don't need is a lot of stuff about how to create bumpmaps and specular maps with Photoshop or GIMP. I want to know how to make existing textures partially transparent / reflective / blurred / swirl around / colored differently / blend into things / etc.

nothing worse than trying to get to that flashbomb/holy water out in a tight spot than having to cycle through 8 keys first.

meh, Aida, I've decided I'm going to go for the gusto on this one, to learn how to mess with material files and skyboxes, and come up with some sort of semi-reflective dark colored water with a texture similar to textures/water_source/sea_water_01. If i can get it semi-reflective and not 100%, then I'll be able to put in the an underwater sea wave effect (looks awesome standing still) that rolls up on shore, similar to ANOOTT, except a long, thin patch that stands vertical instead of flat, and works as func_pendulum that will end up teleporting back to its original position before swinging backward. or something..... i dunno, but it'll be a bitch to time it with the func_bobbing water that moves up and down. Also, I have found by messing with Fidcal's ocean_test map, that you can make awesome simulated moonlight glare on (textured) water simply by putting a bright light above the surface. combine with a low hanging moon and semi-reflective surface...... its gonna be pimp, if i can ever figure this stuff out.

regarding underwater guis: the default thin green murk gui does not seem to work, and I cannot seem to find the underwater guis in the media panel in either texutres or 'other materials'. Is the only way to change them by finding the guis in the tdm_gui01.pk4 and manually entering the name into the underwater_gui spawnarg in DR?

preliminary shots of my vert contest entry. If anyone has any suggestions about how to deal with the water discolorations (its black further out to sea), please tell me. Also keep in mind, this same shore will be visible from at least 2500 units straight up. this is the only reason I haven't solved the issue yet. If the player stays flat on the ground, its pretty easy. Tide in Tide out

heres the def: lots of vertex color, but I dont know anything about material defs enough to fix it. textures/rock/rock03_skysand1 { stone { blend bumpmap map heightmap (textures/rock/skysand1_bmp.tga, 4) } { blend diffusemap map textures/rock/skysand1_d.tga inverseVertexColor } { blend specularmap map textures/rock/skysand1_s.tga inverseVertexColor } { blend bumpmap map addnormals( textures/rock/rock04_local.tga, heightmap( textures/rock/rock04_h.tga, 8 ) ) } { blend diffusemap map textures/rock/rock03_d.tga VertexColor } { blend specularmap map textures/rock/rock03_s.tga VertexColor } } EDIT: ok, after looking down the list a bit further, theres some other skysand textures, not sure what the difference is with any of them, but i picked one that didn't have any crazy vertexcolor or inversevertexcolor. for the record, what exactly is vertexcoloring and why bother with it if it makes crazy rainbows on things?

alright, this ones driving me insane. WHATS ALL THIS THEN?!?! these colors show up at random places on the sand upon every dmap. w..t...f

minor problem with infinity pool: this is the VERTICAL contest. In my FM you'll be climbing up an oceanside cliffwall about a thousand feet high, then scale the outside wall of a fortress butted up on the cliff, and then scale the tallest tower of the fortress. As for the curved water patch, I think similar problem. Basically I need water that blends directly to the skybox color, vice versa, OR: The Ultimate solution is foglight which I have been trying to fanagle since this projects conception, but I can't get it right, even after studying the tdm_fogs material file, Fidcals fog_light entities in Heart, and accompanying script file. Pretty sure the whole problem is that TDM is treating foglights as regular lights unless you do some weird scripting magic, because the skybox and water cut right through it and show up plain as day.

agreed, i've been somewhat burned out with my 'epic' class mansion mission, and the change of pace is very invigorating. I've got a good looking beach with waves that come up on shore, very exciting, but I'm still struggling with how to fade the water into the skybox without just turning the ambient down to almost pitch black. I'd prefer something a little less dirty.

I like this a lot. If you don't stare directly at the edge, your peripheral vision can almost confuse the grainyness for blades of grass sticking out from the grass edge. looks good.

perhaps beta testers should put a stronger emphasis on checking volume levels of different speakers, with sliders all the way up (or at least at roughly the same level) as a standard.

I need some white sand for a beach in the vert contest. closest thing in TDM to beach sand is just plain old nature/dirt/dry_dirt01. anyone capable of texturing got some free time..?

agreed, player clip that thing, problem solved. I also have my own problem now. I'm working on my submission for the vert contest now, and ran into a wall. I need an entity that is both atdm:liquid_water and func_bobbing at the same time... is that even possible? edit: after converting the water to func_bobbing, it seemed to retain its water properties, so it works, but if I rename the entity, it now renames the model, and stops functioning as water....? wth? maybe I need to read up on class inheritence or something. On the plus side, I now have a perfectly functioning beach for the base of my cliff!!! SS's soon to follow in the WIP thread.

I think Komag has already got this contest in the bag http://www.mindplace...kmod/komag2.jpg