Waterfall???

[MetalHead]

Is it possible to create a waterfall in the sdk

PEACE

 

[Yellonet]

Not one where the water actually falls.
You can make a shape that looks like a waterfall and have the texture move I guess... and some steam at the bottom...

 

[MetalHead]

hmm yer sorry i did a search on the forum after i posted and ppl hav bin saying that. Has anyone actually achieved anything using that method. Screens if u have

 

[AgentPothead]

Vampire Masquerades:bloodlines is made on the source engine and I know there is at least one spot in the sewers where there is a kind of waterfall. I can get screen shots of that but I'm not sure it would help without anything else to reference.

 

[MetalHead]

yer go ahead i'll figure it out as long i can see that it can be done.

 

[qTIP]

theres a waterfall in HL2, i think its in the canals on the way to black mesa east, and you jump down it on your airboat...im sure its possible

 

[The Dark Elf]

yer go ahead i'll figure it out as long i can see that it can be done.

Looking through the entities, there is the old water brush entity still in there, which means an easy way of animating the textures too.. It wont look like regular HL2 water (unless you write your own shader) but it'll work fine for waterfalls using the regular tricks, particle spray, audio, mist effects around it. Custom made materials will make it look much better, use a prop even

a good pre-rendered trick for waterfalls is simply a few layers of waterfall shaped polygons, with waterfall looking textures moving over them, alpha channels for transparency, then some misty looking sprites around it (again very easy to do in source)

Something as simple as that will get you a realistic looking waterfall effect, if you've access to a good artist, or sequences of real waterfall water effects to edit together into a seamless animated material. your sorted.

 

[Vegeta897]

Umm... What do you mean "that it can be done"? We just told you how to do it...

You can also have a cylinder or ring rotating.. It's hard to explain...

 

[Vegeta897]

Sorry for the double-post, 15 minute mark has passed.

http://img27.exs.cx/img27/6488/falls.jpg

Here I have an image of what I mean. You have a cirlce rotating clockwise like that into the ground. Looks more like its moving instead of just the texture moving. Also you must add steam and stuff at the bottom for effect and to hide any thing that might look weird.

Although this will only look good if you cannot see the source of the fall.. Well, unless you hide it well, wich IS possible.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Sorry for the double-post, 15 minute mark has passed.

http://img27.exs.cx/img27/6488/falls.jpg

Here I have an image of what I mean. You have a cirlce rotating clockwise like that into the ground. Looks more like its moving instead of just the texture moving. Also you must add steam and stuff at the bottom for effect and to hide any thing that might look weird.

Although this will only look good if you cannot see the source of the fall.. Well, unless you hide it well, wich IS possible.

yep, the cylinder method works, can hide the source the same way you hide the bottom, with some textures just over the top, to look like rushing water, which fits in just fine and hides the "trick" nicely.

 

[Cunbelin]

Hmm I wonder if you could use a combination of the distortion effect you see with the combine barriers and an animated alpha map to create a decent water effect. Mind you that would be for short slow moving waterfalls anything with real height and speed would end up as a mist or at least be so churned that refraction would be reduced to white.

 

[Tynan]

The cylinder only looks right for water coming out of pipes.

I used a static mesh with a panning water texture augmented by foam effects in my UT2003 map Lightfalls/Nightfalls. It worked all right, the water texture could be much better.