Faking an underwater view

rob42lou

L1: Registered
Jun 22, 2009
2
0
Hi, i've been searching for an answer to my problem(s) for awhile now but cant seem to find exactely what im looking for.

What i need for my map is a nice looking seascape that the players would see when they look out the window.

The major challenges of this are the light blue 'water fog' and keeping it out of your area that isnt underwater, the animated water caustic effect using a light, and the surface waves. An example of what im looking for is something like this:

http://www.adamaqua.com/photo/05_coral_reef_scene.jpg

The water fog isnt a big deal, if needed i could fake it in the skybox, but the lighting and the waves have me stumped, any ideas?
 

TracerDX

L3: Member
Jun 9, 2009
127
26
You could do an animated blend into the materials used in the underwater scene to get the light waves. This would require a few material proxies. (See VDC about vmt, proxies and proxy list). This would work for brushwork and displacements. Doing it to non-custom models may be a bit more complicated.

You could use an existing "bottom" water material to get the surface effect, or make your own "Refract" shader material.
 

rob42lou

L1: Registered
Jun 22, 2009
2
0
For the light waves i saw theres the 'env_projectedtexture' entity, but thus far i havent been able to get it to work using the vdc info, and even then im not sure it'll project an animated texture. Though i guess if i cant get that to work i can use a few dynamic lights creatively to make it look somewhat real.

Im not so sure about the material proxies because some interaction with non-custom models is what i was hoping for, but maybe a mix of lights and material proxies will fix that. I'll give it a try. Thanks.
 

NovaSilisko

L42: Life, the Universe and Everything
aa
Feb 3, 2009
502
270
env_projectedtexture only works in EP2.
 

Rootbeerz

L1: Registered
Mar 5, 2008
35
3
Wasn't there an old overlay entity that you could use to add textures to the screen? It was sort of like color correction, but it used a texture instead.