water modding question

[one4five 26]

guys, how to make highly reflective DX water in any terrain?

Edited January 6, 2018 by cosmoseed

[+Menrva 4,198]

Ther is no way to make water reflective as it is in SF2: North Atlantic. That terrain is LOD based and uses its own set of shaders. The other terrains do not feature reflective water but use bump maps to create water-like effects.

Recently, I modded the stock shaders to improve the looks of water, so that the effect looks less repetitive and is applied further away toward the horizon. They use a custom bump map by our fellow modder Stary. Just look below:

 

[one4five 26]

I fly extremely low most of the time, you know how water looks from 200 ft 

your screenshots look nice, i`d like to mod things here the same way

where`s the guide and the stuff to download? :)

[+Menrva 4,198]

16 minutes ago, cosmoseed said:

I fly extremely low most of the time, you know how water looks from 200 ft 

your screenshots look nice, i`d like to mod things here the same way

where`s the guide and the stuff to download? :)

There is no guide, I'm afraid. I just opened .fx shaders with notepad and made my changes inside. Just look for a thread about mue's shimmering fix. He tweaked stock shaders to address a few things. I simply added my changes (new values for some constants) to such shaders.

I'll include my modded water shaders in my custom terrains. I'll update the terrain packages sooner or later.

Edited January 6, 2018 by Menrva

[one4five 26]

1 minute ago, Menrva said:

There is no guide, I'm afraid. I just opened .fx shaders with notepad and made my changes inside. Just look for a thread about mue's shimmering fix. He tweaked stock shaders to address a few things. I simply added my changes to such shaders.

I'll release my modded water shaders in my custom terrains. I'll update them sooner or later.

i`ve got your Iraq terrain, i`ll be waiting 

[+WTRAdmin 474]

Cosmoseed, please do as Menrva mentioned - create a new water rendering technique, textures, and shader - let us know what you can offer to help, thanks!

 

Edited January 7, 2018 by WTRAdmin

[one4five 26]

9 hours ago, WTRAdmin said:

Cosmoseed, please do as Menrva mentioned - create a new water rendering technique, textures, and shader - let us know what you can offer to help, thanks!

 

i looked at .fx files from Menrva`s Iraq terrain using the notepad, there`s too much to learn for me

[one4five 26]

this is the water effect i`m after

[hachBORHSO 94]

[Wrench 9,837]

8 hours ago, cosmoseed said:

this is the water effect i`m after

that's in SF2NA, right? Well, that really can't be added to a TFD/HFD style terrain. See the first response by Menrva

[one4five 26]

14 hours ago, Wrench said:

that's in SF2NA, right? Well, that really can't be added to a TFD/HFD style terrain. See the first response by Menrva

its`s SF2NA

Menrva and your response means there`s no way to modify each and every terrain , it takes building the whole terrain from scratch as LOD based, did i understand the concept correctly? 

[+Menrva 4,198]

23 minutes ago, cosmoseed said:

Menrva and your response means there`s no way to modify each and every terrain , it takes building the whole terrain from scratch as LOD based, did i understand the concept correctly? 

Exactly, not to mention that the Iceland LOD based terrain is so poorly optimized. We don't even have official tools to create LOD based terrains, so all custom terrains are HFD based. I prefer HFD based terrains since they give better framerates, and we have tools to create/mod them.

However, in regards to HLSL shaders, experts should be able to recreate a reflective water shader for the other HFD based terrains; I think it can be doable, but it must be made from scratch. I am no such expert, but I'm eager to learn when time allows.

Edited January 8, 2018 by Menrva

[one4five 26]

3 hours ago, Menrva said:

Exactly, not to mention that the Iceland LOD based terrain is so poorly optimized. We don't even have official tools to create LOD based terrains, so all custom terrains are HFD based. I prefer HFD based terrains since they give better framerates, and we have tools to create/mod them.

However, in regards to HLSL shaders, experts should be able to recreate a reflective water shader for the other HFD based terrains; I think it can be doable, but it must be made from scratch. I am no such expert, but I'm eager to learn when time allows.

that means I`d keep on skimming on Iceland terrain waters for some time :D

i appreciate your replies and thank you for providing the info i needed to know :)

 

[one4five 26]

19 hours ago, namedders said:

your water looks cool too :)