Transparent Ocean -project-

[Marhkimov]

For this mod project, the main goal... is to be able to see fubar's beautiful camo skins through the ocean surface. :D


As you probably already know, fubar has made a VIIB camo skin for the mediterranean theater. The real reason for needing camouflage (in real life) was to break up the image of a submerged u-boat from the air. But as it stands in SH3 right now, the water is 100% opaque, or 0% transparent. Some transparency, or even a little bit of transparency, would be nice. Of course, I don't plan on making the water super transparent. That would be unrealistic, and against my wishes.

If it is at all possible, I would like for increased transparency in the med, while still maintaining limited transparency in the atlantic and arctic.

I'll admit that this falls under the category of being totally "eye candy," but if anyone claims to know me, they'll know that I LOOOOOOOVE eye candy... Just take a look at most of my other mods....



I hope everyone understands my goals... And quite frankly, I hope that they are attainable...


I am theorizing that if we can see the top of our u-boat from underneath of the water, then I must believe that transparency is possible, the other way around. We might find a way to make it possible to see the bottom of our u-boat from above the water. I have heard that an SDK would be needed in order to achieve this, but I do not buy it. I'll bet that we can do this the old fashioned way... By working our tails off!


***And for those who might care to know or for those who might want to do further research, in real life this phenomenon is often called 'Secchi depth' or 'ocean turbidity'... 'Fresnel reflections' are also related.


I have done a little bit of editing in the 'scene.dat' file, but so far nothing has worked. However my results are promising.

This screenshot was taken from underwater. I 'tweeked' a few values in scene.dat in order to get this sort of bright effect:
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8729/18wc.jpg



If anyone has any ideas, comments, or helpful tips, please share. And if anyone wants to help me in achieving transparent oceans, be my guest. I will take all the help I can get! :yep:

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Oboy! That is absolutely WICKED! :rock:

[oRGy]

Clever idea.

Unfortunately the reflection is already modelled above water. Would you not have to add a second reflection or something like that then? Would be nearly impossible I'd say. Sergbuto is the resident expert on reflections, so he'd know better...

Have you also tried finding the water texture files and adding an alpha channel? If you do this with the u-boat skins, you can turn your u-boat transparent for example.

[Marhkimov]

At this point, I'm not too worried about issue of "clashing" reflections. First, I want to find out if a transparent water surface is possible. Then, we'll figure out things from there.


I did have the alpha texture idea, so I will try that later tonight when I get home. The water textures are located in the 'data\Misc' folder, so it's just a matter of editing all of them. But I doubt that will work, though. There was a thread in which Flakwalker tried to make alpha channels on a flag, but it did not work.


However Sansal did post this picture:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a172/hockeemaster/SH3%20misc/0a3a89d6.jpg


I know that it is possible.... Maybe Sansal or another 3D modeller could help???

[Rubini]

marhkimov,

I can be wrong but when I was messing with the nitgh sky/sea i put a alpha channel on the sea texture and the sea become transparent. I will see again. :hmm:

Feedback soon.


Rubini.

[Marhkimov]

Oh yea, how could I forget... The water textures are also located in the 'SkyColors_*.dat' files...

Rubini, I hope you are right! :yep: :up:

[Rubini]

Nope. :down:

I tried to put the alpha channel (with more or less opacity) but don't work.


Rubini.

[Marhkimov]

darn... any more ideas out there?

[rulle34]

@marhkimov
What is yur main goal with this :huh:

[Marhkimov]

@marhkimov
What is yur main goal with this :huh:
Good question Rulle34, I'm glad you asked...


***Copied from the first post...

My main goal... is to be able to see fubar's beautiful camo skins through the ocean surface. :D


As you probably already know, fubar has made a VIIB camo skin for the mediterranean theater. The real reason for needing camouflage (in real life) was to break up the image of a submerged u-boat from the air. But as it stands in SH3 right now, the water is 100% opaque, or 0% transparent. Some transparency, or even a little bit of transparency, would be nice. Of course, I don't plan on making the water super transparent. That would be unrealistic, and against my wishes.

If it is at all possible, I would like for increased transparency in the med, while still maintaining limited transparency in the atlantic and arctic.

I'll admit that this falls under the category of being totally "eye candy," but if anyone claims to know me, they'll know that I LOOOOOOOVE eye candy... Just take a look at most of my other mods....



I hope everyone understands my goals... And quite frankly, I hope that they are attainable...


And if anyone thinks that this is just eye candy, I hope to give you cavities soon. :lol: :lol: :lol:

[rulle34]

@marhkimov
I knew you where up to something :cool:
This is actually great :up:
Did you read and got inspired by my link of camouflage and german subs in the Mediterrian? :P

"In the Mediterranean, the theatre where camouflage was most commonly found, a pattern of dark grey jagged splotches applied at regular intervals over the upper hull and conning tower was commonly used. Sometimes, as on U 453, there were patches with hard edges rather than jagged splotches. As the waters of the Mediterranean are much clearer than the Atlantic, U-boats could be seen from the air at a greater depth. A U-boat at periscope depth could be clearly seen from the air in daylight, so the pattern of dark splotches or patches was intended to break up the U-boat’s shape sufficiently to prevent detection from the air."

Here is the link: http://uboatcolours.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/page6.html

[Marhkimov]

Actually, I do remember reading that... So it was YOU who inspired me! HAHAHA :rotfl:

Great job, indeed you managed to get my juices flowing. :yep: :up:

[Sailor Steve]

I think it's a great idea. Maybe even better if there was a way to alter the Sensors files so the planes could see down to a certain depth even if we couldn't.

Still, it would be cool to use the external view and see your boat at periscope depth.

[kriller2]

You can tweak the water colour and reflectivity but I think the devs didn't include code to make the water transparent from the above, because they wanted to keep the system spec. low so SH3 could run on most computers... But I hope I'm wrong, good luck, it coud be great with transparent water! :up: I will allso poke a little with the settings/code to investigate it further. :cool:

EDIT:

Wait! there is hope it looks like SH3 can show tranparency from the above: :P
http://home.tiscali.dk/roesdahl/sh3/underwater.jpg

... :hmm:

[Marhkimov]

:huh: OMG! Kriller2, in one day you cracked what no one else has even come close to cracking!!!

OMG!! OMG!! OMG!!

Keep cracking away!!! :yep: :yep: :up:



btw, how does it look with a u-boat? And how did you do that? or is that just the normal land reflection???

[kriller2]

thanks I will keep working on it ;) , no it realy is tranparent water, but it looks like the SH3-engive is setup to show land through water when its very near the surface (and maybe only close to land...), so the trick will be how do we tell the code to show the bottom of the sea from f.ex 2 meters... :hmm: Hmm...

[oRGy]

Hm... looks like the standard terrain reflections to me. But you never know.

The biggest problem I reckon is that the SH3 engine divides underwater/overwater into two seperate zones to save on framerate. What's rendered in one won't be rendered in the other except for maybe reflections in certain circumstances (probably hardcoded).

I also noticed that in scene.dat (using timetravellers file inspection tool), there are opacity and reflection settings that can be adjusted. However, adjusting opacity (currently set to 255, I tried 128 and 1), had no effect.

[Marhkimov]

The biggest problem I reckon is that the SH3 engine divides underwater/overwater into two seperate zones to save on framerate. What's rendered in one won't be rendered in the other except for maybe reflections in certain circumstances (probably hardcoded).

I have the same feeling as oRGy, and maybe it's not at all possible. BUT I am working hard and keeping my hopes up. If worst comes to worst and we find that it is indeed not possible, we could always just find a way to activate "see through" reflections from the surface.

[kriller2]

I have taken this shot while I allmost submerged in SH, there is no part of the boat above water! So it must be transparent water: :-j
http://home.tiscali.dk/roesdahl/sh3/underwater2.jpg

Or maybe I am just dreaming... :rotfl: :rotfl:

[Marhkimov]

Well, in the screenshot above, I see something... But I can't say for certain what it is...

Maybe we're both dreaming... :rotfl: :rotfl:

Kriller, can you tell us what values you are changing? If we know what you are doing, maybe myself and others can help.

[Hartmann]

Yes ! certainly there are some thing in the water. the cowning tower ?? ( ) or is a normal reflection in the water ?? :huh:

[oRGy]

Looks like the periscope reflections.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

(sorry Kriller... I just couldn't resist)

Maybe... its the LOCH NESS MONSTER!!!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

(Sorry again Kriller)

[kriller2]

It's okay I have had the same thoughts... :-j I don't think we will succeed in this project, the SH3-engine just isn't capable of rendering underwater-scene from above the water :damn:

[Marhkimov]

Darn, though I hope we keep an open mind... Some SH3 super genius might come by and fix it for us... :yep: