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Level Design Nestor's next map - RO-Pripyat

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#24
OK - well after the revelation that it was fluidsurfaces that were killing the framerate I decided to persevere with the origibnal design - though the boundaries will be cahnged to incorporate willows etc.

I started experimenting with TexEnvMaps and realised very quickly that a texenvmap for a large surface of water is going to have to be VEEERRRYYYYY carefully chosen so that it looks good at all distances. the biggest bugbear seems to be big reflections that appear near far away (hence small) trees so I will make a cube map from the centre of the map with all the centre, nearby trees cleared out.

Unfortunately the emitters still do not show up on screenies - they really add atmosphere to the map.
 

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#28
the water do move ;)

The next major task is getting a translucency mask over the entire fluid surface so that the water can be transparent near the edges and more opaque in the centre.

Trouble is, when I try exporting the heightmap in order to make the mask it goes as a .bmp and, far from being a greyscale, it is a psychedelic mess and therefore useless for creating a mask in the shape of the level's water. Any ideas why this is?
 
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#29
Terrain heightmaps are G16 format bitmaps, i.e. the format handles 16 shades of gray (i think including white and blakc) rather than the normal 8. You need the proper software to handle the G16 format. I think there is still only one program which does.

See this article: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/G16ed

I'm guessing you are using something else, ergo the psychodelic mess.
 
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#30
A little comment on your fluid surface for the last screenshot. I think it's reflecting too many light tones for the amount of light in the scene and the amount of vegetation sticking up out of it. That vegetation would cast diffuse shadows and the water would be reflecting the dark colour of that vegetation. Such a surface would be pretty dark and choatic.

If you have vegetation sticking up through out the water surface, you might be able to mock up a fluid surface by creating a convincing texture. That way you can do without the fluid surface and the TexEnvMaps.

See this article: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Creating_A_Material
 
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#31
I would like to keep the fluidsurface cos of the effect of water lapping that it produces - I reckon that the entire material could be substantially darkened and made greener in the final blend. As regards the vegetation, having some translucency will also negate the brightness and act in a similar fashion to having all the vegetation reflected.

At the moment the hierarchy of the material is this:

Scum on surface -> scaler - > oscillator -> combiner with texenvmap

the follwoing steps are required:

get translucency in & darken it all down.
 
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