Is Our Water Fullbright Or Not?

[SneaksieDave]

 

Okay I was originally going to post to ask if we could use Gildoran's shine-through mod to cure the fullbright water problem (lit surface even in the dark) but now I'm confused. I'm still wondering that, but from looking at the trailer, I'm not sure if our water is actually fullbright or not. At the end of the trailer, that water certainly appears to have dark, unlit spots.

 

What water texture was used in that map? Is our water fullbright or no? Is it a video card limitation? What's going on? Help, save me!

[OrbWeaver]

Water does not need any kind of additive blend. It should be a filter blend that darkens whatever is beneath it, plus the reflection which gives the impression of illumination by reflecting lit surfaces above it.

[SneaksieDave]

So it sounds like ours is set up wrong, because it looks like they all have blends. All I get is old school glowy-water, even with the simple clear water material.

 

NH or gleeful (I assume), what is the texture at the end of the video, how is it set up? Could you supply the files or post the code?

[Dram]

Yeah sneaksie, it's just an annoying setting in the material file. You can change it yourself if you want or pop a line to Gild. Then again, he's only on dialup for a while aargh, so I guess we'll have to do it. I guess we can fix it and then just give him a pm telling him what we changed.

[SneaksieDave]

Thanks, but heh this is going in circles. What needs to change? This is why I'm asking for the material, guys. We have fakey neon-glo water.

[New Horizon]

Thanks, but heh this is going in circles. What needs to change? This is why I'm asking for the material, guys. We have fakey neon-glo water.

 

The water I used in the video is just from the doom 3 resources.

 

water_source/water_clear

[SneaksieDave]

Right, that's actually TDM water. D3 had no water shipped, if I remember correctly. It's also the same water in torchtest.map, which glows. Hrm, so why does it appear non-lit at the end of the movie? Oh this so better not be yet another video card issue!

 

Dram? Back to you I guess.

[Dram]

LOL, ok:

 

The material file containing the clear water is "lloyd_water_clear.mtr". So we open that and there's only one material, "textures/Water_source/water_clear". The material itself:

 

textures/Water_source/water_clear
{
qer_editorimage textures/water_source/w_c_editor.tga
discrete
nonsolid
water
twosided
translucent

deform turbulent sinTable 0.0175 (time*0.15) 10
{
	vertexProgram heatHazeWithMask.vfp
	vertexParm 0 time * 0.1 , time * 0.5
	vertexParm 1 1.5
	fragmentProgram heatHazeWithMask.vfp
	fragmentMap 0 _currentRender
	fragmentMap 1 textures/sfx/vp1.tga
	fragmentMap 2 textures/water_source/vp_water.tga
}


{

	blend blend
	map textures/water_source/water_clear.tga
	translate time*.0,time*-.01

	alpha 0.5
}
}

 

Ok, now, what you should look for is the blend blend part. To remove the neony shit just comment out or delete "alpha 0.5"

 

At least that's what it should be. Hell screw it, I'll modify it to look like friggin clear water and upload it to cvs. When this is up it'll mean all maps that currently use the water will look normal finally.

 

BRB after I play around with it and upload it.

[Dram]

ok, so you don't actually comment it out otherwise the whole water is full bright and non translucent.

 

Anyways, I changed it from alpha 0.5 to alpha 0.01 and the results:

 

Original - alpha 0.5

 

New - alpha 0.01

 

alpha 0.01 - shining torch into water

 

 

As is visible, the water is completely transparent. IMO it would be totally cool if we could get some sort of fog underwater that is only visible when lit up. Or the mapper can just do it himself via a particle effect ala Sneaksies rain, except that it would be beams of light. Hmm, we should try that, make a nice beam of light that a mapper can place via a patch with a material, just like Sneaksie's rain.

[Dram]

aaaaand it's on cvs. The clear water that is

[OrbWeaver]

As is visible, the water is completely transparent. IMO it would be totally cool if we could get some sort of fog underwater that is only visible when lit up.

 

For that you might use a foglight. Particle fog is not really appropriate for underwater, but the foglight gives you a nice "growing more opaque with depth" effect.

[Dram]

Yeah that's what I was thinking too The only problem with it is that it would'nt be lit up by light but would be unlit. I guess it could work very nicely for a deep blue water or something, or in a pond lit by external sources. I guess we'll have to do a few tests, but the foglight probably is the best in this case.

[Dram]

Oh wait! NOW I see what you mean! you mean that instead of a reshapable particle effect material you place a foglight instead, that way lighting is not an issue. Yes, that could definately work

[SneaksieDave]

Looks great, and good idea, I'll try it out on torchtest and if it looks good, upload it. Thanks guys.

[SneaksieDave]

Torchtest.map is updated to use fog in the water. It needs tweaking (probably too bright), but it's decent. Much better than the day-glo water from before. Plus, there's the concern of just how many lights do you want in a pool of water? Right now this one has three: ambient, warbling effect, and fog.

[OrbWeaver]

A foglight isn't really a light, so don't worry about the performance.

[SneaksieDave]

Good god, what the hell shit is this (the water material) edited in? Freakin note symbols at the end of each line, and formatted to crap in all three of notepad, wordpad (which I've been using fine for weeks for materials) and even DOS edit.

 

Bah, stripping them out by hand, I guess.

 

Gotta make some more water.

[Domarius]

Yeah you need a text editor that supports line breaks OTHER than just Windows line breaks

There are Unix and Mac linebreaks to consider. None will look right in the other, so there are apps that support all of them and just show you how the file SHOULD look.

 

www.textpad.com

[SneaksieDave]

I'm able to read and write all the rest of 'em in wordpad... the last time I remember seeing these musical note symbols was the days of black models. Oh well, stripped 'em out!

 

Anyway, there are two new waters, the only difference being a slightly higher alpha on the clear texture. (0.01, 0.02, and 0.03)