Water Clarity

[Sailor Steve]

How do I change the clarity of the water in SH4? In SH3 it's easy because it's covered by Commander.

I've checked the Scene.dat file with S3D, and couldn't find anything relevant to it, even though I've been told it's there.

[Nisgeis]

I think it's called 'Underwater Fog' but it's been a long time since I looked in those files. Someone who knows what they are talking about will hopefully be along soon.

[BillBam]

Webster has a mod for water clarity here:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=152907

[Zel]

If you mean water clarity when the camera is above the water surface, go to data\shaders\water , and edit "watertransPS.fx" or "watertransp64PS.fx". can't remember which one. You can edit them with the notepad, search for DepthLength or MaxDist.

If you're talking about clarity for underwater view, open scene.dat with S3d
Node - sky -> EnvData -> EnvData -> Underwater -> Fog -> ZMax

I'm not sure how much is one unit of ZMax, though.

Hope that helps!

[Sailor Steve]

It did help, Zel, and thank you. I did mean the underwater view. As I said, I had read 'Scene.dat' but I went in and couldn't find any files that said "Water". Your directions took me right there. The 'Zmax' seems to be the same as the files in SH3. I set it for 3, and then for 2, and I'm happy with the results.

3:





And 2:





Though it's certainly not to everyone's taste, I like the murky feeling.

I hadn't thought about the transparency as seen from above, but now that you mention it I might try to shorted that a bit as well. Problem is I looked at the files you mentioned, and I found the word "Depthlength", but I'm not sure what the numbers mean and was afraid to fiddle with it. Anyway, I'll figure it out sometime (probably not without more help).

Thanks again.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I found the word "Depthlength", but I'm not sure what the numbers mean and was afraid to fiddle with it.
Thanks again.

Well I can understand being nervous, being so new to the forums and all....

Throw it in a Mod folder and fiddle away.

Peabody

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by peabody

Well I can understand being nervous, being so new to the forums and all....

Hey! No fair picking on the old guy!

(Cool! I've finally reached an age where I have my own special 'victim' status!)

Throw it in a Mod folder and fiddle away.

Peabody

You mean, like, make a JSGME-ready folder and test it that way?

D'OH!

[Zel]

In the shader files, find this:


depthlength = saturate(depthlength/maxDist);

in the other file:

depthlength = saturate(depthlength/maxDist + shallowfactor);

Replace maxDist with (maxdist * X)


example: depthlength = saturate(depthlength/(maxDist*0.5));

X>1 should increase clarity
X<1 should decrease it

Mod both watertranspPS.fx and watertransp64PS.fx because i'm not sure which one the game will use.

[peabody]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Hey! No fair picking on the old guy!

(Cool! I've finally reached an age where I have my own special 'victim' status!)


You mean, like, make a JSGME-ready folder and test it that way?

D'OH!

Yup that's what I meant. As for picking on the old guy, I'm only a step and 1/2 behind you. Woops, did I fall asleep again?

Peabody

[Sailor Steve]

Well, I've just spent two hours experimenting and testing, and I like it!

@ Peabody: Thanks for the suggestion on JSGME. I'm going to relable what I've done and make several folders, one for Atlantic, Med and who knows what.

@ Zel: Special thanks for telling me what I needed to know. There is one thing though - it's the opposite of what you thought. The smaller number is more clear, larger is less. I don't know why, but there it is.

Here's what I found:

.02




.05




1




2




5




Any darker than 5 and you really start to lose the boat at periscope depth. I'm thinking I'll experiment with 20 meters and see how that looks, as that's about as deep as a plane should be able to spot you. Maybe 30, so the top of the conning tower will be at about 20. We'll see how it goes.

[ichso]

Hi there,

I was looking into the same issue some time ago and wanted to reduce the water clarity (when viewed from the surface). I was quite happy with the result and wanted to make a little release out of it.
But because of a lack of time I stopped tweaking it further - and playing too.

Here is what I got up until that point:

Also in this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=162424

The change done was to edit the last lines of the main function in the data/shaders/waterTranspPS.fx file like this:
(IIRC, can't test right now)

     float maxDist = WaterParams.w;

     //[ser] Increase opacity near intersections to make water edge more visible
     float shallowfactor = saturate(1/(depthlength*25 + 1));
     //[ser] Attempt a pseudo-antialiasing by decreasing opacity smoothly near zero-depth
     shallowfactor = saturate(shallowfactor - pow(shallowfactor,4))*2;
    depthlength = saturate(depthlength/maxDist + shallowfactor);

[Sailor Steve]

That's interesting. I know so little about the files and what they do that I've never considered trying anything at all, much less the fancy stuff. I keep hoping to learn but I have so many other things I'm doing that I just keep putting it off.

[Nisgeis]

Hmmm, I fixed the white jaggies around the sub in PE4 - are they back again in Real Environment Ichso?

[ichso]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

Hmmm, I fixed the white jaggies around the sub in PE4 - are they back again in Real Environment Ichso?

Hm, do you mean this white rectangle on my screenshot ? That was there for some other reason I do not remember anymore.

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by ichso

Hm, do you mean this white rectangle on my screenshot ? That was there for some other reason I do not remember anymore.

The white rectangle was probably because of umark.dds being changed and isn't what I'm referring to. It's hard to see in your screenshots, as they have been scaled down, but it appears that there are white pixels around the wires and edges of the sub.