i never really pay attention to water in the engine
only now a notice that water is like vector shape
i think one of the next upgrade if it will be any is the roundness of the shape of the water
it is a single and small issue but makes a lot of difference in aesthetics

and by the way th rat that someone put it free to use, it is awesome
everithing works great in that model , everything , even work better than some models that i purchased in the store
my sincere congratulations to the creator , and many thanks

i think you mean the terrain is vector based - water is smooth, if you place a circular object it will intersect perfectly fine.
the issue there is the terrain is not smoothed off which you can fix by using the smoothing tool

p.s. this is not off-topic, you should post this and your red screen thread to the main chat as it relates directly to GG

[MOD EDIT] SmallG is trying to help that comment was not appropriate , I'm going to put a video already public to explain what I see and i mean , thanks

NOT ROUND
I am not dumb if i say the water or the terrain or else is not round , it is not round ok . GameGuru cannot deal with roundness of the water and if i am wrong show me
i will put a video show what i'm saying
of course we can deal with this masking with some vegetation

but id i say it is not round it is not around and please we must deal with the engine problems so the development team could fix and improve the engine

again i am one of the many who talks bad and good thinks ii am a pragmatic guy not a stupid with closed eyes

thanks


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od05aRI3Ob8&feature=youtu.be

Your problem is not with GG's water. It's with your terrain and objects intersecting the water. Water is simply a flat plane that stretches on "indefinitely" and terrain and objects intersect this plane. If the terrain or object is not of a sufficiently high poly count, then you will get "flat" edges where the water touches the terrain or object. To minimize this, you need more polygonal faces (shaped correctly, too) to help reduce the flat looking edges where they intersect the water.

EDIT:

To try to help a bit more. If you fill your sink with water and then insert a flat object (like a cutting board) into it, then where the water meets the flat object, the water will have a straight edge.

Terrain and objects in game engines, like GG, are made with polygons, all of which have flat faces (like the cutting board does). The way to "hide" these flat faces is to add more and more polygons to approximate the shape you want. You can never have a perfectly smooth curved surface with polygons since game engines don't use things like sub-division surfaces, NURBs, etc., but use polygons. So, if you move in close enough on any surface, you will find flat edges in game engines. Adding more detail to an object or terrain can reduce this effect, but it comes at a cost of potentially slowing down the game as the engine will have more polygonal faces to deal with.

it's still correct, the water is a flat plane, it doesn't cut or change, the intersections are made by the other objects - if your object doesn't have a round shape of course the water won't be round/smooth... as i said, the terrain/object is the issue, not the water
put a round object in the water and it will go around the shape perfectly... terrain is not round, your garbage is not smoothed either.
p.s. nobody is saying you can't talk bad about things/GG - just pointing out you're complaining about the wrong side of the argument.

@maiacoimbra69
Now look at something much more detailed than those old low poly garbage models in the water …
Beautifully formed around it .

GG also can create a watermask for where the terrain intersects the water plane.

This is/was used to feed the water shaders to increase transparency of the water in shallow water and where terrain cut through water plane.

Many people did not like this effect but I think used carefully it minimises the jagged outline of the water to terrain boundary.

It is turned off by default in setup.ini (to save texture video memory). If it doesn’t work when enabled it is because the shaders need to have the code reinstated. Preben had it on his todo list but not user if he got to it. If not I could apply it.

Doesn’t help with objects placed in water only terrain.

Cheers.

oh yes i remember that, i think it was just a little bit too transparent though.
real water tends to get white and foamy around the edge which would have been a much better effect, perhaps the current system is too flat to make that look good though

i think this image does a good job to show the water on object contact


but round objects do look pretty round (as much as can be expected due to polygon limits etc) to me at least.


p.s. sorry if anything i said made you think i was calling you dumb or stupid, we're not

@ smallg
You are great mate.

To be honest in a pond environment water almost dissipates as it gets very shallow and darker as it gets deeper
For example the waters edge never looks like this …



It looks more like this which would hardly show any line.



So the best effect currently i have found is more transparency to give a reasonable effect to the edges ..

That’s the effect that GG can automate. It modifies the transparency of the water plane based on the depth of ground under it, at terrain/water boundary. So shallow goes transparent and depth fully opaque on a gradual scale.

I’ll post info later on how to enable this so anyone interested can try it.

Cheers.

Sounds cool. Personally I've never been that impressed with Game Guru's water shader. Reflection seems to be applied to the whole plane, when in reality it would be more pronounced the more oblique the angle (i.e. more reflection further away, or the lower you are to the water plane, less reflection up close or directly beneath you). I know Game Guru's water shader already does this to some extent, but it falls apart when trying to balance reflectivity against water transparency. Also the lack of displacement mapping is a killer.



AE

I'd love to know how to turn on the transparency based on depth of ground - always one of the things (like reflection depending on angle) I thought could be done better.

Shame we can't apply some of the shaders from minecraft as there are some that do a pretty decent job of approximating water reflection/refraction.

Not being dumb does not necessary make you right. In this case you are wrong, the lack of roundness you see is the polycount of the terrain and especially of that model you showed.

As Argent Arts explained, the water is a perfect plain and does not make any shapes whatsoever. If you put a perfectly round object in the water, the water around that will also be perfectly round, guaranteed ( as is visible with the model that synchromesh posted. )



-Wolf

close Game Guru if open
in setup.ini, change so that memskipwatermask=0
in effectbank\reloaded folder, back-up water_basic.fx (e.g rename it to water_basic_stock.fx)
in effectbank\reloaded folder, delete water_basic.blob
copy attached water_basic.fx into effectbank\reloaded folder
restart GG.

It looks like this effect was removed from the stock shader, so this version puts it back.

I also added some 'foam/swirls' at the terrain boundary (don't get too excited, as can't deform the water plane) - this can be turned off in the shader, comment out USEEDGEFOAM by preceding with //.





Cheers.

Nice tip Ciber, ty for sharing.
Maybe as aside note, you should change so that forceloadtestgameshaders=1 to force GG generate water_basic.blob file again, don't forget back to forceloadtestgameshaders=0 when done.

Don’t need to do that if you delete the blob file. It will auto recompile if missing. And saves doing all of them for just the water basic shader.

Cheers.

Thank you. Great stuff as always.

See it's this sort of stuff that really should be recorded in a knowledge base that's searchable by topic/taxonomy. Having this really useful information in a forum makes it really difficult to be aware of.

But bravo - this works like a dream!

Thanks guys - I'm getting some not too bad results now, this version needs a small engine tweak though to change the depth calc of the water mask:



Cheers.

Nice to know. Great pic mate.

@ cybernescence
Using your water_basic.fx shader It works nice as you said, anyway don't know if the water setting can improve it.



@ all

Someone using Night City Docks Pack - created by Disturbing13 ?
Before (november version) woking fine, now (march fixer version) getting black colored (untextured), I've noticed items using D2.dds and not effect file, so I've changed to D.dds and effectbank\reloaded\entity_basic.fx file with not to avail. Even I've changed so that vsync = 0 and just got the nao dancing AC/DC as Mokai said, (well this no prob just turn to vsyn=1).

Anyone with the same issue?

Enjoyed the read on this thread.

@3com. Did you delete dbos and restart. I'm sure you have. Haven't heard about black texture since I was on the forums years ago. Make a new thread if continues.

I made a detailed post about vsync somewhere, best used to assess frames during development. GG used to ship vsync off.
Vsync on 60hz monitor = 60fps max
144hz monitor = 144fps max.
However if you drop below 60fps, the refresh rate will counter 55fps to 45fps ect, if this occurs suggest to try vsync off to gain frames however screen tearing is a factor. I've seen less demand on the GPU when using it on. Hope this helps.

Yes I did. Anyway ty 4 the tip.

About Night City Docks Pack - created by Disturbing13

I understood that GG did not care what texture file the X file was pointing to, and what mattered was what file the fpe file was pointing to, but apparently it is not like that.
All the X files point to a bmp texture file, and I had to import the X files and then export them as an obj file to 3ds max, redirect all the textures to .dds files and then re-export them as an X file, now they work fine.
I explain this so that it serves other users who have the same problem with this pack.

@ Disturbing13
Many thanks 4 sharing the pack, it is really good.

thanks for the posts guys