Underwatery look
LumpN
Join Date: 2002-10-30 Member: 1725Members, Subnautica Developer
Join Date: 2002-10-30 Member: 1725Members, Subnautica Developer
By the screenshots it seems like you are not going to blur everything into a big blue mess like many other games do. This is great news because I like games that take you to lush, colorful, and exotic places. On the other hand (again judging by screenshots) the game doesn't look very underwater to me (yet). Currently it looks more like air, blue fog in the distance, and waves in the sky. The concept art somehow manages to convey being underwater despite not being all blurry blue. How do you do that Corey?!
So my question is: How are you going to make it look more underwater without sacrificing contrast?
I guess that adding floating stuff (fish, jellyfish, etc.) and marine vegetation would help a lot. Also perhaps ambient particles / clouds floating in the water might help perceiving the empty space as water. Oh and bubbles! Bubbles everywhere! Does a linear gradient of fog help (lighter blue near surface, darker blue near bottom)? What about light shafts? I'm pretty sure the perception of being underwater has something to do with lighting.
So my question is: How are you going to make it look more underwater without sacrificing contrast?
I guess that adding floating stuff (fish, jellyfish, etc.) and marine vegetation would help a lot. Also perhaps ambient particles / clouds floating in the water might help perceiving the empty space as water. Oh and bubbles! Bubbles everywhere! Does a linear gradient of fog help (lighter blue near surface, darker blue near bottom)? What about light shafts? I'm pretty sure the perception of being underwater has something to do with lighting.
Comments
Woah, great research! I was surprised to see University of Kiel pop up in your references. That's were I was studying CompSci. The second author is my professor of Computer Graphics. He has lots of projects with the marine biology department and the Future Ocean initiative of the European Union. It all makes sense now.
Looking at their pictures it becomes quite clear that this is not what UWE wants because it results in very low contrast. But it certainly points in the right direction. Perhaps a tweak here and there or some interpolation of "usual" lighting and underwater lighting will do the trick. Interesting times!
Getting the right draw distance on the fog is going to be tricky. We certainly don't want the really pulled in, claustrophobic fog distance that most underwater games (and real life) has, as that would get really monotonous over a whole game, and also ruins some potentially cool and epic vistas. But pushing it too far out results in it not looking underwater, and also has performance implications.
Floating particulate in the water, light shafts, animating caustic effects, and bubbles and other underwatery FX will all be added to help with the feel, and we are hoping to get some depth of field blur in, as well, for stuff in the distance.
In general it is going to take a lot of experimentation to get underwater look that will work best for the game, but we are confident we'll get there.