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Originally Posted by Kendras
Here V12 with Patch 11
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Here patch 12 :
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How should I use them? Do they require any previous patch? I see no particle library file in your patches, are the modified particle generators stored directly in materials.dat?
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Preparing Patch 11 with full explanations.
New main features :
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- created a totally new concept to create foam around the rock
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Originally Posted by Kendras
About the new foam effect, we have to replace the experimental texture, but the idea is there ...
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Not the easiest thing to create. Please test patch 11, which contains a new method to create foam, with an 'experimental' texture. Once again, a nice texture is needed for it. May I ask you to create these textures, I know you're very skilled (among other things) in creating textures.  |
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Originally Posted by Kendras
- the experimental foam texture has been replaced with a basic texture used by SH3. This foam effect is more visible in calm sea. Flickering effect due to the waves, not looking very nice ...  What do you think ? If it was only me, I would not add any foam effect. |
I have been experimenting myself with the foam effect, but I didn't release anything related with it as I wasn't not even remotely satified with it (yet).
I didn't get time to look into your files yet, so I don't know how you implemented the effect, but in my case the flickering problem was caused by foam particles being flat and not following wave ripples. The best solution would be finding a controller forcing the game to render particles directly on the sea surface (provided that devs had thought about such a controller). If that wasn't possible, I suppose that the second best solution would be making single foam particles quite small, and linking them to their particle generator as object particles, each of them with a floating object controller attached. I hope I am amking myself clear.
As for textures, please have a look at the link below:
http://unigine.com/articles/procedur...ent-generation
We could extract a single frame from that big texture or, preferably, we could use it as a whole and set it as an amimated texture (has I have noticedm PG's support them). Should the resulting animation look too stuttering, we could extract just a few frames, and generate the intermediate frames with a morphing program
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Originally Posted by Kendras
About the Depth bias controller, we should always set it at zero, else it's useless (IMO) and there are side effects.
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Very interesting controller. This was the kind of effect I was searching for light halos to be always placed in front of the lantern. We should use it for this purpose.
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Tests with this controller have not given univocal results so far: sometimes it seems to work, other times it seems not to have any effect, and some other times it seems to do things worse. The game randomizing environmental parameters every time the testing mission is loades, doesn't help either
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Originally Posted by MLF
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Yeah, cool video !  I will try to copy the effect. |
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Our model should be this :
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Terrific and frightful at the same time
I wonder how lighthouse keepers could live in those wet traps in days like those lol, anyway I hope you guys aren't really aiming at mimicing that effect: wind speeds in SH games are limited to 15 m/s and such an huge splashes would be totally unrealistic even for the highest wave we can experience in game
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Originally Posted by Kendras
I made a big splash effect in patch 11, but with same texture used with medium splash (i don't like new textures very much). We might also use a white smoke texture. Now, I would like to add to it this vapourized water effect, but I didn't manage to create a nice one so far.
To answer your question, this new effect (vapourized water) should be added only with the generator used for the highest waves. Let me create this effect, I only need a correct texture for it (I will try with white smoke).
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a better texture is needed. More looking like vapors.
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The horizontal splash texture used for smaller waves is okay IMO, but I agree with you that the spray texture could be a bit better. Vapour mixed with small water drops is what whe should aim for. I don't think any of the smoke particles already in game are fit for it. I will see what I can do with it
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Originally Posted by Kendras
With all the new particle generators we are creating, the number of placement nodes has a real inpact on game fluidity. I think we should go back to 8 nodes for the little La Plate beacon. Keep in mind that with La Vieille lighthouse, which is a much bigger object with its rock, we will have to add more than 8 placement nodes (or create a new effect with bigger particles to reduce this number of nodes). I'm searching for the minimum number of particles to have a correct effect.
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I have increased placement nodes under request by MLF, who complained about the poor look of the splashes when seen from top. During my tests with the modified files, I coudn't notice any notable side-effect, but I agree with you that, when in the same area we will have many models linked to the same PG's, some lagging could happen especially on low-end computers.
The cure to that could be restoring the number of placement nodes to 8 (as I think you did with your latest patches), or decreasing the number o particles per particle generator, so that the total number of particles won't change. In other words, the same number of particles would be distributed more evenly around the model (overall visual effect shouldn't change much when seen from the sea level, and it should be better from the top).
Talking more in general, something we should do is setting PG's opacity/density scale far parameters appropriately. By doing that, we would save computer resources and improve the far look of splash effects (not being affected by haze, when seen from far distance our splashes stand a bit too much on the horizon).
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Let's give up. I don't think we will manage to make our particles to follow the wind. Of course, this would be a very nice addition, and could be used also for ships' funnel smoke. But it probably requires a hardcode modification. So, I suggest using this feature only for big splashes and vaporised water, with a fake wind going north.
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I couldn't agree more
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Yes, I agree on having a new and loudlier sound for very big splashes.
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Have you found any good sound for that? The submerged wave sound could be improved too. Oddly, it sounds okay inside the sub, but I can hear some sound distorsion (like a clipping) at the end of the SFX when it is heard in free camera
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Originally Posted by Kendras
Yes, permissions granted to adapt this mod to other SH series, but with full credits and non commercial use, as always.
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Originally Posted by Kendras
So, after the splash effects, the only feature which has to be done is the damage model ? Let try it together with La Vieille lighthouse, as this lighthouse will have different damage boxes types, and is located very close to La Plate ...  |
During your absence I dealed mostly with effects, but now that you are back on duty I will leave them to you. Damage models are nearly ready. Below you can see how the top tower will look (more or less) after all the detachable eave pieces (12 in total) are blown up:
I only need to twist/smash up/rip away the rebar frame (most of it will be gone in the final version).
Talking about effects and features that still need(ed) our attenction, I have reworked a bit your light effect. I have set its flashing period according to this graph:
light flashes duration: ca. 0.4 s
short dark pauses duration: ca. 0.3 s
long dark pausel duration: 4 s
All in all, flashes last a bit longer now, and they are more easily conted. I hope you don't mind me modifying your setting; tomorrow i will post here my update.
Still talking about the light effect, I have calculated that its range in the SH world, for the La Plate lighthouse, should be ca. 15 km (eqivalent of 8 nm at the same latitude in RW), and I have set effect's LOD distance accordingly. Despite that, in calm weather and with perfect visibility, the effect becomes invisible at a distance of ca. 9 km, whereas the lights of the generic lighthouse models you have added with patch 1 are visible from further away. I don't know if this difference is caused by the different sizes of the two light effect, or by the fact that 'unit' objects become invisible before 'terrain' objects. I have also read that SHIII's skydome is a 3d model, and that different mods have been released to increase the visible range of far objects; this limitation might also come in the picture. What do you know on the topic? What's the radius of the stock SHIII atmosphere, and what the rendering radius? Talking about the latter, as far as you know, is there any differenece between units and terrain objects?