[TEC] Hull water film

[kapitan_zur_see]

update: SEE [REL] here:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=185834


Just another abandoned feature I stumbled upon while messing around with the goblin editor... I don't know if it has been previously mentioned, but I thought it might interest some moders here nevertheless.

If you load up any u-boat model and its sim files, there's a behavior you can attach to the hull that (tries to) simulate a water film. It can be find under the grannyloader behavior and it's called HullWaterFilm.

Now if you normally try to apply it, you'll get an error and a message stating that there's a missing texture called "perlin_noise_4channels" which goblin should be finding under the data/textures path... Now there's normally no textures directly there (they should be in either Tnormal or TLowRes subdir), and textures related to FX stuff should even be in the data/misc directory. Hardcoded mistake or oversight probably...

Scanned whole /data to search for it and it doesn't exist, but there's three called perlin_noise, perlinnoise and perlinnoise1 under data/misc. So I took one, copy it over to data/Textures and rename it accordingly. Then I could apply the effect in Goblin, though I don't know how different the texture I used is compared to what was to be that perlin_noise_4channels texture that is missing and what's the impact on the effect.

It renders the whole hull slightly darker, light is much less diffused and there's a strong specular highlight under direct light. Bump mapping is also strongly affected. This is to try mimicking some wetness.

Here are comparison shots in Goblin On and off, under exact same lightning condition:

Without:




With:






Here's what it looks ingame:










Moreover, there seems to be some special function that was more or so implemented to it that seems to be related to height (altitude of the sub) albeit you cannot see it most of the time when applied to the hull (the effect seems always higher than the hull top). Indeed, you can see it if you try to apply the effect on the conning tower (it doesn't really work and causes glitches ingame as it was obviously made only for the hull).

The effect is not just applied as a plain reflective texture, but there's some kind of "line" that seems related to height state of the sub ingame that divide the effect in two. Ingame the line will mimic the waves outline shape and everything that is bellow will be rendered with the special water film effect and everything above will be rendered as normal, without the effect. The outline also seems to go lower and move up again from time to time although it seems rather unrelated to height state of the sub.

Here's some conning tower shots, you'll clearly see what I means and the difference above and under the outline (you won't see wave shape mimic under Goblin however):






It is of interest to notice that sadly, there's strictly no controllers to fiddle with in this behavior such as min/max altitude (as in caustics effect) and the like.

Applying to hull ingame is stable, doing as well on conning tower does produces glitches after a small period of time (flickering of the whole sub textures, conning tower appearing transparent). If applied as is, the effect is always turned on, be it on surface or underwater. Haven't tried messing around with my perlin_noise_4channels improvised texture yet.

It is tied to the granny shader you can find under /shaders/Granny , however sadly, my shaders programming skills are next to zero...!

I think there might be a small playground there, if it never has been mentioned before.

I believe it's been clearly abandoned due to lack of time, the effect not looking good enough right out of the box and a decade function not being implemented properly (I believe the main purpose of this "line dividing stuff" was to gradually go lower just after surfacing the sub so as to mimic the film pouring and disappearing)

Still, I can release a WIP version as is (for the hull only and always on) for those who may still be interested in it at this state.

[Rowddy]

i love that mod already welldone

[Myxale]

Oi, quite nice.
Hard to imagine how many unfinished features are withing the game, that UBI-RO never had the time to realize!

[kapitan_zur_see]

Here's what I could release so far, notice bow wetness close to wake splash:



Currently play testing with AI ships hull and other stuffs

[Lurhker]

Nice find, great work !

[rascal101]

This is great well done, always wondered how to make the subs and ships look like they were actually wet, hope this develops well

Regards to all Subsimmers

Rascal

[kapitan_zur_see]

Added the anchor and metallic stuffs on deck (hatch etc.):





How it looks underwater:





The odd sharp line shader "bug" that you sometimes get. I'll try and mess with the shader... I plan on having a much more subtle and expanded gradient so it won't be as sharp at all and so it becomes gradually less wet from bottom to top of the hull and not this overly sharp rare transition:

[Obelix]

I would place the management ubisoft suicide out of shame. Excellent work, wet the boat looks very realistic.

[Magic1111]

Hi !

Excellent pictures and work !

I want to have it in my game....

... NOW !!!!

Best regards,
Magic

[kapitan_zur_see]

Doing some very good progress with the shader!

Corrected a lot of annoying things, I'm now planning on releasing in the next minutes or so.

I've corrected the sharp wave line bug tht you could see on one of the previous pictures. The hull is not overly dark anymore, it's lighter and even better, light is now fading along hull. It is a tad darker at the top of the hull and going lighter all along down to the waterline.

The odd wave line have been forced fixed on the middle of the hull above waterline part (was previously going up and down the whole hull in a sinusoidal pattern) and diverted so that everything that is below the odd wave line is rendered very slightly lighter and the wave pattern is randomly changing. I know it's hard to describe but it gives a nice very subtle light effect, as if the ocean waves were very slightly reflecting light on the hull.

More over, only hull parts that are above waterline will be rendered wet. It means only grey hull part and saddle above waterline will be rendered shiny and wet, the entire hull under the waterline is rendered normally as before, preventing an "entirely über shiny u-boat" effect.

doesn't really do it justice but:

Progress before:





Progress now:





Testing at the moment ingame

[Magic1111]

Looks very nice !

Best regards,
Magic

[andritsos]

excellent!
i have just a question, during the testing you have been doing did you notice any performance decreasing as this might take more resources

[kapitan_zur_see]

No, it's just a simple small shader as it is. The kind of thing every GPU on the market now can handle very easily, like bump mapping.

I haven't seen the slightest decrease in performance.

Preparing the mod right now for every u-boat for v1.0 release

[Vorkapitan]

Very nice "looking" Mod!!

[tonschk]

Thank you kapitan_zur_see , about the time when SH5 was released I made one or two PM with elanaiba about this specific " wet hull effect " and discussing a way to add this feature to SH5, this wet hull effect is a much necessary and needed SH5 feature, thank you again