Broken water (not a leak)

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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I tried to add water, at close range the water looks all nice and works properly. However at a distance at certain angles the water decides to go into a broken state:
2015-12-03_00009.jpg

The last thing it rendered is kept at the same place as if it decides to handle it similar to a nodraw. The water animation continues.

I tried multiple water textures:
water/water_2fort
water/water_2fort_dx80
water/water_hydro_cheap
In all cases this bug shows up. Having cubemaps and lacking cubemaps doesnt seem to matter. Having a cubemap spefificly pointed to the water texture again does nothing.

I do remember this bug from the CSS days already, but i never knew what causes it. So here is my question:
Why does this happen, and what is the way to fix it?

And in case you wonder, at close range it looks like:
2015-12-03_00004.jpg


(both screens have the water/water_2fort texture)
 

MoonFox

L10: Glamorous Member
Mar 17, 2015
739
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do you by any chance have water at two different levels?
to add on: to fix (if yes), make all none top face viewable (what you jump into) nodraw. To fix (if no), check to see if your water touches the skybox, as that causes hammer to get all kinds of messed up.

PS, I hope to see your map finished, looks good for what you have currently
 

MaccyF

Notoriously Unreliable
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Mar 27, 2015
914
1,544
to add on: to fix (if yes), make all none top face viewable (what you jump into) nodraw. To fix (if no), check to see if your water touches the skybox, as that causes hammer to get all kinds of messed up.

PS, I hope to see your map finished, looks good for what you have currently


even if you nodrawed properly, if you have water surfaces are like this ____ ------ if those are two different bodies of water within the same visleaf (i think) you'll get broken water too.
 

Vel0city

func_fish
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Dec 6, 2014
1,947
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even if you nodrawed properly, if you have water surfaces are like this ____ ------ if those are two different bodies of water within the same visleaf (i think) you'll get broken water too.
As long as those bodies of water don't touch each other they can be at different levels. It's a different story if you're using expensive water however. But this doesn't appear to be it in this case.

If you haven't already, I suggest deleting all the water brushes and rebuild them from scratch. This might just be some stupid bug nobody's ever heard about that is fixed with just remaking the brush, and since we're speaking about Source, that's more than likely to happen a couple of times.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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Thats the only water surface in the entire map and its at 1 level, and its made out of multiple brushes where only the top is textured with water.
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
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Feb 22, 2014
1,016
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Thats the only water surface in the entire map and its at 1 level, and its made out of multiple brushes where only the top is textured with water.

The VDC page for water says that water brushes must be rectangular and implies that you should only use a single brush. Try doing these 2 things and see if the problem persists.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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It still persists.

Is there anything displacement related that can cause the issue?
 

Zed

Certified Most Crunk™
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Aug 7, 2014
1,241
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Is your water bordered by other brushes?
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
A substatus, thanks to E-Arkham i now know that its related to vvis since the problem starts happening on leaf transitions.