Transparent Surface Plopable water ... one step further ?¿

[FrankU]

Jeroni,
Definitely the transparent effect is beautiful. What ever direction this project is going, it will be something useful.

Another question that comes up: I have been looking for plopable flora, but could only find trees and rocks (a lot of them), but on your pictures I see shrubs and waterlillies.... Can you tell me where to find them?

[jeronij]

Jeroni,
Definitely the transparent effect is beautiful. What ever direction this project is going, it will be something useful.

Another question that comes up: I have been looking for plopable flora, but could only find trees and rocks (a lot of them), but on your pictures I see shrubs and waterlillies.... Can you tell me where to find them?

Some of them can be found at Gizmo's home 

[DuskTrooper]

Wow, I love the concept! It reminds me of something I experimented on recently....more on that later.
Are the pieces actually transparent, or are those just "specialized" pre-rendered items?  If they are truly transparent, I'd hope that you'd make a tutorial or something of the like in the future.

Anyway, here's a picture of my experimental pieces, with a STRONG emphasis on the word "experimental".  There are indeed eyecandy only, but I could probably make even more extensive and realistic pieces if Jeronij would spill the magic beans regarding this new trick.

[Pat]

DT those rocks are totaly wicked wow... Also your PW is something else sweeeet...

[Emperor Stormont]

Oh my goodness. This would be a fantastic addition to the game.

I really must congratulate everyone who creates new and exciting things for the game, unfortunately I cannot and I am therefor confined to displaying them in a suitably glorious fashion.

I await further news on this and look forward to using it, a very long overdue addition to the game.

[Ennedi]

At this moment DT's proposition looks much more promising (although the water surface is still "dead"), but the problem isn't easy and I must think about it much more. (Edit: I must say I was really excited seeing DT's picture )

I would like to suggest you to make a few steps back, to the first Jeronij's question: what to do to make the water surface more realistic?

So, what water features decide about it's realistic (or unrealistic) look?
Is it transparency?
Or wavy texture (different from the sea surface of course!)?
Or light and shade?
I suggest to open Google, choose "Graphics" and write "lake" and then "river". You will see a lot of water surfaces. How many pictures shows the transparent water? And under wchich conditions?
I downloaded some pictures from Google this way, but I don't want to waste the space in Jeronij's thread. Do it yourself

At this moment I don't want to formulate any definitive opinions. Questions are better now

[DuskTrooper]

That's why I posted here; I want to perhaps work with Jeronij a bit to see what we can come up with regarding this project.

As stated beforehand, the image I showed contains experimental pieces only.  However, if one were to attempt to make the surface of the water more alive, some difficulties may arise, such as tiling, etc.  Many other issues also are present; both known and unknown  Alas, such are the  shortcomings of SC4, and BAT...

[dedgren]

OK, here's variant 1 of the ideas I threw out here yesterday [linkie].



...that's pretty rough, eh?

I can see from Jeroni's subsequent post that he is taking the approach of having gridsquare size "center stream" tiles and gridsquare size "bank" tiles for each side.  What I've done above is do one stream width prop per running gridsquare.  His approach would be more flexible from the standpoint of making streams of various widths (ignoring the substantial problem of how to transition from wider to more narrow, and vice versa), whereas mine would involve fewer lots at the cost of that flexibility.

As for curves, it would seem to me that 3x3 or 4x4 (or even larger) gridsquare lots with one big "curve" prop on it would work.  Using the larger lot would provide for the precise positioning that would be necessary and allow for more gentle and irregular curves.

A few thoughts and questions.

I can see that unless the streambed is absolutely flat, neither Jeroni's approach or mine will work because of artifacting where the props overlap or gaps where they don't.  This plays heck with rivers and streams, but I don't see why right now that we couldn't be doing lot-based small irregular ponds and lakes.  Just terraform a nice flat area, plop in your 7x4 pond and, bingo, you are ready to go.  Jeroni?

I don't know enough about what Jeroni is doing to figure out whether his props could be made ploppable without using a lot as a base.  If so, the more meticulous among us might be willing to expend the time and patience to make these props line up just so.  Again, lots of stuff for no reason apparent to me can be made ploppable, so this just might not be possible.

What about making long stretches of linear lot-based streams, say 10x2 or 10x3, and then trying to come up with something to address the far fewer number of gaps (thinking about it, it is unlikely overlap is a problem, as a horizontal prop centered on an inclined gridsquare, the way the game works, will not reach either two or four of the edges)?  I'll draw another diagram when I have some time.

I'll come back, too, with a diagram of the second variant- ploppable banks.

Later.


David

[LoneRanger]

I suggest to open Google, choose "Graphics" and write "lake" and then "river". You will see a lot of water surfaces. How many pictures shows the transparent water? And under wchich conditions?
I downloaded some pictures from Google this way, but I don't want to waste the space in Jeronij's thread. Do it yourself

I don't think the purpose is to create rivers or canals [we have them allready] but more for small/shallow streams, small ponds etc.
Like this:


defenetly transparent. 

[Ennedi]

I don't think the purpose is to create rivers or canals [we have them allready] but more for small/shallow streams, small ponds etc.
Like this:


defenetly transparent. 

As for small streams/ponds you are absolutely right. But even if it would be the only purpose of making new water pieces, it wouldn't be such easy.
Look at your picture. In the terms of SC4 you are in the closest zoom, aren't you? And now think how will it look from bigger distance - you definitely will not see the rocky stream bottom. You will see something completely different.

As for the purpose of this work: Yes, we have canals, but we haven't rivers (above the sea level) and lakes. These are large surfaces and this is a real challenge

[figui]

wow. looks really promising.

[Pat]

A one liner i have to say " gentlemen start your engines "  This idea is really flying off... Now only if Jeroni, DT, and David would work together i bet you all my membership that they would make this work and do a darn good justice at it as well....

[Ennedi]

A one liner i have to say " gentlemen start your engines "  This idea is really flying off... Now only if Jeroni, DT, and David would work together i bet you all my membership that they would make this work and do a darn good justice at it as well....

Yes Pat, and you and me will have to rebuild all our lakes, rivers and waterfalls...  But with he new good stuff I will do it with pleasure, and you too, I suppose

[Gaston]

I love this idea.   This is what ploppable water was missing.   I think David is on to something as to how the pieces could be made.     All you guys amaze me with the talent you have.   


---Gaston

[Andreas]

The amount of awesome new things I discover here daily is astounding - and I'm once again crawing around on the floor, searching for my jaw that has dropped once again. The transparent ploppable water looks very promising, and (needless to say) a hundred times better than the previous attempt. DuskTrooper's pic looks very promising, too, and those trees have caught my eye (are those available anywhere?) as well.

[jeronij]

Hello to all and sorry for the late reply  , but investigating and managing things to work takes some time 

DT, your experiment is really looking nice. The combination of the water and the rocksbed is really realistic  . I learnt the tricks to make this possible from Cogeo ( THANKS again  ), but the original technique does not work properly with this idea, so I am in the process of polishing this technique. I will PM you some info about the process, so you can also experiment with it. Once we understand how it works, we will post a tutorial with the permission of Cogeo of course 

David, I hope the following picture saves you some more hi-res graphics      

I understand all your comments and concerns.... "We dont want anything new. We want the same, but better" ... I have been working several hours searching the way to fix some issues... fortunately the game is complicated enough to allow you to figure out an alternative way to mod it  , I finally went into this:



I hope you can excuse the poor quality of the scene, and you can see the potential of the plopable transparent water . Did I say plopable ?¿. Yes I DID    ¡¡¡

[jeronij]

He he he, I know the crappy picture above does not give a good idea of the situation .... 

Now, let me introduce you the transparent plopable water, in a more elaborated scenario. It took me less than 15 minutes to create this.



















No terraforming at all. Plain terrain. I hope you like it now, and you find it an improvement 

[dedgren]

Jeroni, if that's what it looks like, today will rate right up there with the day they released the first NAM, and CAM day.

WOOT!

On my way home.


David

[Travis]

Words don't express how amazing that is.

I'm definitely one of those plopable water fanatics, and this will revolutionize the way I play.

I second David on this:

WOOT!

Great work, Jeroni. 

[DuskTrooper]

Das Uberwoot, I say!

I tested the tutorial you gave me, and it worked! There are a few kinks I have to work out regarding the modeling itself (location above grade, etc...) but this is a major breakthrough!  This plop water sure has come a long way since when we came up with it over 2 yrs ago (if anyone can remember )...