Questions about water editing (color and wave effect)

[Rends 166]

I have Starys Germany hires texture installed.

Today i noticed that the water wave effect (up/down) does only work on the boarder of a water Terrain tile.  

The waterwave sliding movement works fine it's the wave up/down effect that works only on a part of the tile. Anyone else seen this too?

Then i used the original 256 res (Starys is about 512 res) Waternormal  and it works fine but didn' look as good.

 

 

What i want to create are smaller waves looking water because most of the Terrain is over land and most times you only see the rivers..

 

Next water Color.

I want to change the river Color from the current blue to a more blue/green/Grey Color.

For a test i opened one of the Terrain river textures ( GERMANYC-RIVS1.tga) and changed the river Color and save it.

Once in game the Terrain texture tile looked distorted. The land parts showed up in yellow colors (liked someone dropped an A-bomb) and the river looked bright blue.

I must have done something completely wrong.

 

Hope anyone can help me out here?

 

Rends

[Fubar512 1,350]

The crude water shader used on the older tod-based terrains does not really move in a vertical fashion.  It simply transitions over and upon itself, giving  the impression of movement.  

 

The only sure-fire wave to create smaller waves is to edit the shader so as to increase the number of bump maps that are laid down per tile.  If I'm not mistaken, someone (possibly Stary) reported that the series no longer reads edited shaders.  I created this video to show off a few tweaks and models that we were working on at the time (this was over 6 months before the release of SF2:NA).  If you run the video at its highest resolution, you'll see the wave effact that used to be possible by editing the shader so it lays down more bump maps per tile.

 

Edited January 10, 2014 by Fubar512

[+Stary 2,427]

seems the engine STILL uses the waternormal.bmp to create 4-frame animation of waves

 

1  2

3  4

 

on a waternormal map

[Rends 166]

Does it mean that editing the shaderfx still works? If so what do i need todo to get the smaller waves?

 

And please help me out with the water color too!

 

Thx,

Rends

[Wrench 9,851]

shaders are locked away; have been for some time

 

as mentioned once before to change the water's color, you'll have to repaint the water on EVERY SINGLE SEA TO LAND TRANSITION TILE, INCLUDING RIVERS, RIVERMOUTHS, AND SEAPORT TILES.

 

(the ocean tile's repaints is a 'given')

[Rends 166]

shaders are locked away; have been for some time

 

as mentioned once before to change the water's color, you'll have to repaint the water on EVERY SINGLE SEA TO LAND TRANSITION TILE, INCLUDING RIVERS, RIVERMOUTHS, AND SEAPORT TILES.

 

(the ocean tile's repaints is a 'given')

Does it mean if i change every tile the wiered yellow color will go away?

[Wrench 9,851]

only if you use the correct image manipulating program. I use Photoshop 6, as 7 has some "issues" with 32-bit tga with alpha. I've never tried it with Gimp or Paint.net, as why would I need too??

 

as you mentioned about the yellow in the German Forum, about the yellowing. I can guantee whatever you're using is fouling up the alpha channels

 

can you post a screenie of the yellowing? It'll help me see what screwing up, and confirm or deny my suspicion. Also, what/which imaging program are you using?

[Rends 166]

Wrench, i added the texture if you have a Chance to check it?

I'm using PaintShopPro11 but i have also Photoshop Express on the Mac install if it's any better.

File link https://www.hidrive.strato.com/lnk/7Iuvu4Pu

 

Thx,

Rends

[Wrench 9,851]

good!

this is the tga?

looks like GermanyCE ...

 

lets see what's happening here!!

[Rends 166]

Yep, it's the modified .tga for the Germany terrain.

 

Btw: the original one was from Starys hire tileset

Edited January 10, 2014 by Rends

[Wrench 9,851]

did you by chance use the waternormal.bmp AS the water??? That's the only thing, in ALL terrains, that has that color.

That's a no-no

 

I've restored the alpha back to it's stock type, from Stary's seasonal Germany. the odd thing is, there's nothing that I can see wrong with the RGB channels either.

 

It's either something wrong in the data ini statements or ????????????

 

how you got that to show as such, I've no idea.

[Rends 166]

Seems to be a Alpha channel Problem. Yours works fine in game. Check Screenshot.

Will run some tests tomorrow to check what's going wrong.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Rends

[Rends 166]

Must have something todo with PSPXI. Got it working with Photoshop Elements.

 

Now i need to find out if there is still a way to get smaller waves.

 

The only water normal that seems to work on the whole water terrain tile is the original one with 256 pixel resolution.

The 512 pixel waternormal that came with Stary hires germany files works only at the border of of the terrain tile. Means the wave up/down effect shows only at the border at least on my installation

Edited January 11, 2014 by Rends

[Rends 166]

Just another question.

Can i add more textures?

I just noticed that my Elbe river delta file with a color transition from rivergrey to seablue is also used on another part of the river where it doesn't match with the textures next to it

The TFD tool say it'ts texture 99.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Rends

[Wrench 9,851]

only in the terrain editor.

 

Gerwin's tool is really good for 'seeing' target areas, generating the planning maps and water bmp, and generally getting the 'lay of the land'.

This is NOT a slight to Gerwin; its a fantastic piece of programming, and helps out a great deal with a LOT of things I (and others) do. But, even with all it's faults, I can still do things in the 3W TE faster, and more accurately than the TFD tool.

Especially when new tiles are needed.

 

 

Elbe river delta file with a color transition from rivergrey to seablue is also used on another part of the river where it doesn't match

 

again, without screenshots, we're working in the dark.

If you're describing what I think you are, you need to repaint those mismatched sections of the river/sea transition. TKs tiles, well there's no way to put it gently -- suck on a LOT of the tile-to-tile match ups

 

a properly done city-river-to-sea tile looks like the one below. This is were the clone tool comes in handy

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rends 166]

Wrench,

if you look at the river screenshots here (post100)

http://combatace.com/topic/81125-sf2-germany-flughäfenwo/?p=651303

it's the third screenshot with the Transition .

 

And here is the same texture  used on a different location

[Wrench 9,851]

if you're talking about the last pic, those are SG tiles, not rivers

the ones in the german forum, shows an sg-rivl or rivr. the other tiles are SGs (with the Yak-38)

 

why they keep screwing up has to be something on your end -- I'm using the same GCE tileset for the northern Europe map, and don't SEE any of these issues.

 

you've got to be doing something wrong with the tiles themselves (alpha or the RGB channels), the data ini, the tile's _hm.bmp, the heightmapscale=, or something. I just don't know.

without having each and every tile, and/or the entire terrain in front of me, there's no way of knowing.

[Rends 166]

No they don't screw up they are fine. It's only that the texture above is used twice. One time at the Elbe river Delta and one at the location you see in the screenshot.

What i need to know now is how to add a texture using the Terrain Editor. But it's good to know that i can add more textures.

I just downloaded it and it came with no readme. Well i will search for more information about how to use.

Thx,

Rends

[Rends 166]

Ok, i learned how to add a new texture. Problem solved.

 

Now let's see how to find a solution for creating smaller waves.

[+Julhelm 266]

You can do this by loading the waternormal in Photoshop, and using RGB 128, 128, 255 on a new layer to reduce the intensity. If you want to make the waves physically smaller that's not possible with the locked shaders.

[Rends 166]

Ok, while i got all other Problems sorted i created a new one lol.

 

I reworked one of Starys hires Germany textures to add a Harbour. All seems to look fine if you are Close but if you zoom out the water texture Looks somewhat different.

I guess it has something todo with the Alpha channel Color? If so how can i make sure that my new texture fits perfectly?

 

 

[Rends 166]

My daughter fixed that for me.

And i was right it was the alpha grey color that cause that trouble.

[+torno 6,139]

apart from the sea photo realistic painting I solved the problem of smaller waves, taking normal water any file and attaching these 4 bmp successfully achieving a large size, but the result is very satisfactory. 

excuse my English

[stingray77 4]

Looks quite good... A bit too "cold" for Vietnam but very fitting for NA.

I especially like the last pic.

 

Will you upload this as a mod?