Unreal 1 water effects?

[r00tb33r]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HAQ5740 ... annel_page
I recorded this to show you the ripple water effects found on Nalic2 map of Return to Na Pali mission pack in Unreal Gold.
I think those look nice... Can we get some nice water effects for Deus Ex in some mod? How about some water reflection?
I understand that we won't want THOSE ripples everywhere, but in general I think it would be cool.
I don't really know how water works in Unreal 1, but is it just a surface with an animated texture?

[EDIT]
That video doesn't do those ripples justice btw, seeing them in-game at high resolution is quite a bit different. I tried taking still screenshots, but the ripples are only apparent then they are in motion, otherwise you wont distinguish them from the mass of green.




...Oh and I totally forgot about the cool water effects starting with Unreal 2 engine... So I guess if those ports ever happen, water effects wont be a problem at all. Still, it would be nice to see them in NV or HDTP.

[DDL]

Uh....DX does have those effects.

Look at the water around liberty island: see those ripples? Yeah.

They're both exactly the same kind of procedural texture, but with different settings: the NaPali one is more "concentric ripple" focussed (for, I guess, largely stagnant water around a castle), the DX one is more "general wavelet" focussed, because it's..effectively the sea. (well, hudson estuary, I guess?)

In theory they could've made tailored water effects for every area they had water in, but they didn't because it's a shitload of work: making procedural textures look 'Meh, ok I guess' is piss-easy, making them look 'NICE!' is really hard.

They did at least make two water textures, blueish clean water and greenish dirty horrible water (see bottom of the pit in the secret MJ12 lab under hell's kitchen).

[Jonas]

(well, hudson estuary, I guess?)

Presumably not in Hong Kong

[Jetsetlemming]

Those ripples are from the animated water texture. That's supposed to be swamp waters and it's rippling from the invisible bugs and frogs n' shit in it. All you'd have to do to get DX water to look like that is remade the water texture or rename the unreal water one and stick it in the DX files.

[DDL]

Presumably not in Hong Kong

Or in Paris, or in the pacific-coast ocean lab, or in the depths of Area 51, no.

But in terms of 'first water you see in the game, which would look shit if it were rippling like a pond', it's the hudson all the way, baby.

You pedant.

[Jonas]

Unless you take a holistic approach to the ocean.

Better water effects would be swell though. I think we just used the Generic Dirty Water texture for damn near everything in TNM.

Go go dystopian near-future.

[r00tb33r]

Well I was thinking of a quality animated texture for waves, that would look hopefully as good as those ripples in Unreal 1...

Also, does Unreal 1 engine support both reflection and transparency on one surface? It would be cool to perhaps add a semi-transparent reflective layer to simulate water reflection... Sorta like the floor in the lobby where you spawn for the training mission, but like 50% transparent.

[DDL]

That's what you get with both mirror and transparency set. If that marble floor was just set to "mirror", it would reflect perfectly, and you wouldn't even see any marble. If it was set to translucent, it would..probably give you a hall of mirrors effect, actually, since it's cut straight into the void, but assuming it wasn't, you'd be able to see through it as if it was..well, translucent marble (you'd still see the marble though).

Both makes a 'reflective surface that you can still see the texture of'. But not one you can see through.

Doing so for water would therefore make a reflective surface you can see is water, but not water you can see through. I've tried it, and it has it's place (sometimes) but it looks a bit rubbish generally.


Also, procedural textures scale quite badly as far as creating them goes, so to make a ripple effect large enough to be a wave, you'd probably have to settle for a fairly low resolution texture scaled up massively. Which would look terrible.

And to be honest, those ripples aren't that great, surely? Have a play with the editor: they're ludicrously easy to make (but again, quite hard to make well)...

[Jonas]

Let's get that guy with the enhanced UT renderers to implement reflection/refraction and specular. That should do it, right? How hard can it be!?

[Jetsetlemming]

Well I was thinking of a quality animated texture for waves, that would look hopefully as good as those ripples in Unreal 1...

Also, does Unreal 1 engine support both reflection and transparency on one surface? It would be cool to perhaps add a semi-transparent reflective layer to simulate water reflection... Sorta like the floor in the lobby where you spawn for the training mission, but like 50% transparent.

Reflection + transparency means you see 50% reflection, 50% the texture. It makes a good "polished marble floor" effect. You can't see through the surface, the transparency just means the texture shows somewhat instead of the surface being a perfect mirror.

Edit: Though, I've never tried it with a natively transparent texture ie glass or water, just with a normally solid texture with the transparent flag checked...

[DDL]

Glass and water aren't natively translucent. They just look better than most other textures when they're set to it...

[Jetsetlemming]

It's been a while since I last messed with Unrealed.

[r00tb33r]

Well I was thinking of a quality animated texture for waves, that would look hopefully as good as those ripples in Unreal 1...

Also, does Unreal 1 engine support both reflection and transparency on one surface? It would be cool to perhaps add a semi-transparent reflective layer to simulate water reflection... Sorta like the floor in the lobby where you spawn for the training mission, but like 50% transparent.

Reflection + transparency means you see 50% reflection, 50% the texture. It makes a good "polished marble floor" effect. You can't see through the surface, the transparency just means the texture shows somewhat instead of the surface being a perfect mirror.

Edit: Though, I've never tried it with a natively transparent texture ie glass or water, just with a normally solid texture with the transparent flag checked...

I meant the water surface is 50% transparent, where the the surface is made up of water texture and reflection.
Its something I've done in image processing class in school... RGB addition or whatever.
I guess the proper question to ask, and to give you a clue to actually what I really mean, is whether a reflective surface can be partially transparent at the same time?
Can the marble floor be partially transparent, and reveal stuff below it?

[Jonas]

I guess the proper question to ask, and to give you a clue to actually what I really mean, is whether a reflective surface can be partially transparent at the same time?
Can the marble floor be partially transparent, and reveal stuff below it?

No, is the answer you should've been able to glean from DDL's post. It cannot.

[r00tb33r]

I guess the proper question to ask, and to give you a clue to actually what I really mean, is whether a reflective surface can be partially transparent at the same time?
Can the marble floor be partially transparent, and reveal stuff below it?

No, is the answer you should've been able to glean from DDL's post. It cannot.

Aww, thats too bad. Yeah I guess Unreal 1 engine is quite dated after all.