Looking for: Shader to recreate water surface obj

[fandelfinger]

Hi there!

I've been working on quite a sophisticated Turrican fan game for more than two years now and I've recently started to change around my project to benefit from HWA.

However, the water surface object, which I've been using for underwater effects so far, doesn't work with HWA enabled.

I'm desperately trying to work out a solution to recreate this effect (as displayed in the attached example, water surface object extension included as well) using shaders applied to a background object for maximum performance. I don't know anything about shaders though . I've been trying different shaders, but I couldn't figure out how to recreate this effect.

I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can help me out on this. I'm just dying to have this effect.

Best regards,

Florian

[Crash86]

To re-create that, you could always have some horizontal active objects moving up the screen with the Lens shader applied to them.

I think there has been mention of a water shader. Not sure if it's finished though. It's a nice effect but I would think it might be possible to generate an even more advanced, more random effect.

[LB]

Water is random!? Since when?

[Crash86]

Well, have you ever ventured outside to see how it actually moves?

The way it moves is unpredectable. It is shaped by myriad variables like the movement of air over it, the forces of the tides and the effects of temperature.
That's why it appears very random to the extent that supercomputers can't accurately model it.
So, since forever, I would have thought.

It's a nice effect, which that object generates, but no-one can tell me that real water makes waves as straight, evenly-spaced and as uniform all-round as that. That's all I'm saying and you don't need to be so argumentative.

Do you have any other questions you'd like me to answer for you in the meanwhile, or can we get back on topic? Because I'd like to get closer to an answer to the OP's question.

[LB]

Yes, I have a question, I put some water in a bucket, let it be still, and then pocket my finger in it. It looked just like the Water Surface object makes it look, except that the water surface object wraps around its edges instead of bouncing the waves. If you're talking about ocean water, you're asking me to understand chaos theory and to keep track of every edge and surface, water currents, and everything that causes waves in the water...You can throw in the random yourself, that's the idea behind having more control

By the way, I had no intentions to argue - I was just surprised that water was random, but now I see you meant that it seems random.

[Crash86]

I agree, you're gonna be much closer to how the Object behaves when you, by scaling-down, exclude wind, tidal-force and... stuff, that's right.

But nomatter how much/little water there is (or where it is and how little wind is acting on it), you won't get ruler-straight, identical and evenly-spaced waves.

When I say a "random effect" I mean a "random effect". That seems to correspond pretty well with the above insofar as you could introduce random wave-shapes, randomised wave-speeds and randomised spacing between waves, which would look really good, I think.
I reckon you could piece that together just with Lens-shaded actives and maybe some scaling.

I hope it's understandable how I tood "Water is random!? Since when?" as a slightly argumentative approach and I apologise to the OP on their thread diverging into a bunfight.

[fandelfinger]

I've tried lens effects before, but I've found them to also add some perspective effects, thus distorting the picture on the x axis as well. I'd only like to have distortion on the y axis, as displayed in my example. Any ideas?

[RobertRule]

I'd kill for this very shader. Kill, I say!

[nivram]

I think I got yelled at for suggesting forum members kill each other.

Marv

[keokeo]

I know looki has made a water shader which Nifflas has been using for quite a while now, but he hasn't released it yet. I came hoping to hear some news about it. Here's hoping he sees this thread and decides to release it publicly.

You can see the shader in this trailer:

http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=The+Great+Work