Question About An Effect I'm Working On...

Reese

<div class="IPBDescription">alien textures and water..</div> I'm trying to work out an effect where an alien alpha texture is used over water to make it look like the infestation has grown on the water. The "water motion" is made up of two func_conveyors with the water texture at slow speeds (no push obviously) moving in two random directions. The water itself is a func_illusionary with the contents as volumetric light. Anyways, just looking for some comments, see if anyone has ideas on how to make it better.

Here's a pic:

Reese

and here's a sample bsp. Please note that this requires ns2.wad, ns.wad, and liquids.wad to all be installed.

watch_me_die

Make the alien alpha a bit darker compared to the water, and perhaps some lights underwater would make it stand out a bit more...

looks great so far however, NS maps have been a bit lacking in the area of good-looking water so far <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->

Reese

Does this look better?

Maveric

two func_waters with a really small one on the top with the infestation picture. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> i think that works. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->

watch_me_die

<!--QuoteBegin--Reese+Oct 16 2003, 02:47 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Reese @ Oct 16 2003, 02:47 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Does this look better? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
maybe make the infest a little more see through <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->

Nazul

aight.
its great .. the part i dont get is : 2 conveyors in random directions ? why not just normal water ..?

ssjyoda

I like it. But how about putting some green/blue lights under the water.

Reese

Nazul: The reasoning behind that is that you want to try and make an effect layer for the rippling water. A normal func_water (or func_illusionary with contents set as water) will still make the water noises while you're in it. a func_conveyor does not (to my knowledge at least) Also you want to be sure that the two layers don't ever line up and move as one for any length of time, as this would probably look really really bad. (try putting two func_illusionaries with rendermode additive the same texture, and about 150 render fx on top of something and see what happens)

yoda: I would like to get some better lights on the water, but I don't really know how. If it put the lights underwater it won't affect anything because at that point the lights are inside the brush, which means they won't light up the face the player is looking at. If I put a "skin" brush that is one unit in height and textured with the alien texture on top of a NULL textured water brush it will achieve the effect... but only if you're underwater. The only solution I have at the moment is to try some colored light_spots that hit the water at an angle. This should highlight the goo on the water and make it look better, but we'll see how it turns out. I'll have to look into it more... this is really my first attempt at using water in a map so I don't understand the dynamics too well.

I wish there was some kind of a "only recieve light values from target" addition to the func_ brush based entities. Then you could do that and set the target as whatever underwater light you have. Either that or just an option for xyz invertions of the normal on a face to be included in radiosity. (sorry if this is either too much info or incorrect math, it's been a while since I took a calculus class, much less anything else)

Fox_One

Only problem I can see is that if you use openGL, the water will make waves.

//edit
Ohhhhh..never mind...I see what you said about using conveyors instead now.