water not showing up (noob question)

face-melter

L1: Registered
Oct 3, 2009
11
0
Alright so i just started learning hammer and C++ about 2 weeks ago since i have decided i want to go the route of level design and software engineer for a career (or army since i suck at everything).
my problem is i have a small water pool and the top of the water dose not show up when i run the map, also when i jump in i can't see anything out the top but the sun.
i got some screen shots here for ya to look at.
http://s566.photobucket.com/albums/ss102/mattonator/
hope i can get some help. if it means anything i added a cube map just be4 these shots were taken seeing if that would fix the problem...it didn't ><
 

face-melter

L1: Registered
Oct 3, 2009
11
0
paintball0005.jpg
paintball0000.jpg

ok i guess these are the 2 that will help the most, and i just checked for leaks again can't find any,but i do get this line when compiling
"Placing detail props : 0...1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10
Water found with no water_lod_control entity, creating a default one."
 

Rengaurd

L1: Registered
Oct 12, 2009
6
0
I don't know what the exact problem is either, but early on one of my problems that I had was the fact that when I compiled the map there were several different 'modes' you could compile in. If you haven't set anything in the compiler, set everything to at least fast or better. instead of none.

Also a real dirty way of making the water appear is to create a box/brush around your entire map area, texture it with "skybox" (blue box with skybox written in it) and then compile your map. This lets you do some stuff like checking quickly, but later on can make compile times extreemly long and also drive the map size up in terms of file size.

Finally place "no draw," a texture that is a yellow box, on any face of the water that people will not see from the outside. If you don't do this, it will cause some other visual errors.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Water_lod isn't 'important', atleast it's not a requirement, the compile process creates a default one if you don't have one placed with your desired custom settings. It wont cause your water to "break".

edit: Throw your compile log into here: http://www.interlopers.net/errors/ and this will look through your compile log for errors for you. It's not full proof, in that some errors lay beyond the compile process itself, but it'll have most of the common related errors and how to fix them in its database.
 
Last edited:
Aug 10, 2009
1,240
399
I've ran into the same error tons of times, its a leak in your map. Go to map > load pointfile and a little red line should appear in the 2d and 3d views tracing a leak that your map has to an entity. You'd be surprised where they crop up.
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
If its not a leak, it could be a few things:

The water is a displacement.
You have two sky_cameras
Your water is touching the void.
 

lucky

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
May 25, 2009
583
145
Did you assign the cubemap to the water brush?
Did you compile with vis?