[REQ] Fix missing reflections

[ncorpuz34]

At least for me: It seems that fire and smoke reflections are missing in SH5 when SH4 had them. A nice little effect the devs forgot to put back in? Along with the reflections from the light, there should also be shadows created by the opaque plums of smoke right? It would make the nice graphics even nicer.

[Rongel]

Originally Posted by ncorpuz34

At least for me: It seems that fire and smoke reflections are missing in SH5 when SH4 had them. A nice little effect the devs forgot to put back in? Along with the reflections from the light, there should also be shadows created by the opaque plums of smoke right? It would make the nice graphics even nicer.

Sorry for the late reply!

Enough humour, now to the serious part . This issue is in my opinion one of the biggest graphical bugs that SH 5 has, and probably the most difficult one to fix. I've spent several days figuring this out, and got basicly nowhere. It seems that it's futile to edit fire particle effects and water-reflections, they don't do anything.

I have a theory about it, and maybe some modder can use it, or give better ideas. I think that the reason why the effects don't reflect from the water is that they are .dat files and not GR2-files. As far as I know, no effect is reflected from the water, all particle effects, halos, smoke, debris, water sprouts, TDW's lighthouse lights etc. are invisible in the water. Also the imported .dat ships don't reflect. GR2 objects seem to be the only ones that work.



That nice picture is just basic SH 5 without any trickery. So you can actually see fire reflecting from the ship. But it is only visible in certain angles and situations. Here you can see what's going on:



The fire is reflecting only where the ships reflection is showing. Flames can be seen only if they are crossing the actual reflection. If there is no structure behind the flame, it won't show up.

I wonder if it would be possible to make a GR2 flame, maybe just one node file, and attach .sim file to it where the fire particles are placed. I did a quick test, and Goblin editor crashed...

Or could it be a shader issue, can it be modified so that even .dat stuff would work? Any good ideas out there?

[gap]

Originally Posted by Rongel

I think that the reason why the effects don't reflect from the water is that they are .dat files and not GR2-files. As far as I know, no effect is reflected from the water

...

GR2 objects seem to be the only ones that work.

...

The fire is reflecting only where the ships reflection is showing. Flames can be seen only if they are crossing the actual reflection. If there is no structure behind the flame, it won't show up.

Nice theory. I have another example demonstrating that SH5 deals with particle effects as it does with DAT units: ship bubbles (or any other underwater FX for that matter) are always blurred unless they are rendered on the background of a granny object, or against the water surface.

Originally Posted by Rongel

I wonder if it would be possible to make a GR2 flame, maybe just one node file, and attach .sim file to it where the fire particles are placed. I did a quick test, and Goblin editor crashed...

If memory serves me well, I haven't ever seen a particle generator stored elsewhere than in DAT file, but good test anyway. Have you tried putting your flame in game? It crashing Goblin doesn't necessarily mean that it would crash the game too

Originally Posted by Rongel

Or could it be a shader issue, can it be modified so that even .dat stuff would work? Any good ideas out there?

Yes, the answer must be in shaders. SH5 shaders are optimized to work in a GR2 environment, but devs left DAT meshes and particles out. Remember how TDW managed to make DAT units visible through the water surface, by modding the water shader. He, or Pintea, might also know how to fix water reflections.