Meltwater

[Silentwings]

New map!
SF: http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/meltwater



16x16, an open plan water map for 2v2-8v8 games.

I made it to see how close I could to get to running water- snow melting on the mountain tops and water running into the main lake. Its not brilliant, but its not bad either, so here it is. It was made using World Machine.

edit: updated to v4, with much thanks to qray - see viewtopic.php?f=81&t=33570&p=570383#p570820 for more detailed screenshots.

[qray]

Very nice mountains

I would guess that splat detail with a fitting pattern could really improve the water impression - and increase contrast to hill rock around.
Maybe combined with higher specularity where the water is ... and tiny blue and white particle CEGs where the water ends in the lake?!? (was recently thinking myself a bit on how to do waterfalls etc. but haven't played around yet - still occupied with updating my last map ))

[Silentwings]

You could well be right - if you (or anyone else) wants to try it I'll happily make them masks of the flow map and the points at which the streams meet the lake.

[qray]

Now that the update of my last map is finally finished I could give it a try.

[Silentwings]

Ok, here you are! http://springfiles.com/spring/other/mel ... masks-qray
Let me know if you need anything more.

[qray]

Should be sufficient together with the stuff extractable from the smt.

Looking at the masks I was a bit surprised of how many flow lines actually are in the map.I expect that will require high res images and could change the look quite some.
Well, let's see what comes out

[Silentwings]

Ah, that's because the water flow is drawn and then the snow is placed/drawn on top. You might need a mask for the flowlines with the snowy areas removed from, let me know if so.

[qray]

If you have a snow mask, it would be perfect to have. Then, also rocks and snow can get different detail textures

Here a very first crude example of what I cooked up in the last half hour: a very simple first try at splat detail (textures, intensity and size will need quite a lot more adjusting, I guess). In addition a normal map from the provided pattern- which might be a tad too strong
Specular changes are not really visible.

For higher res: click on image

original

1st experimenting

close up

[Silentwings]

Ok, that looks awesome. It takes ~1h to build the texture on my big machine and I don't have access to it until later but I'll get you a snow mask then.

[Silentwings]

Snow mask: http://springfiles.com/spring/other/mel ... -mask-qray

[qray]

OK, downloaded. Will do something with it in the next days

[qray]

I uploaded the shading maps to http://springfiles.com/spring/other/mel ... ading-maps including the corresponding SMD file. Just extract into Meltwater's maps folder and it should work - well, SMD file needs renaming to fit map file names, I guess.
It contains splat detail (difference between materials), normalmap (emphasize water trenches/gorges), skyreflectmod (melt water flow shinyness) and a slightly adjusted specular map.

I have not done much with the CEGs for water spray so far, so they are still missing. But I thought, you might want to look at present status so you could report any problems and comment if you like it or if you want something changed

Credits: one splat detail texture is a standard from spring itself, the rest is from Beherith viewtopic.php?f=56&t=21565

[PicassoCT]

inb4 animated water shadder using heightmapbuffer..

[Silentwings]

Looks great to me, feel free to release a v2 of the map when you're finished!

[qray]

I have not done much with the CEGs for water spray so far, so they are still missing.

inb4 animated water shadder using heightmapbuffer..

CEGs are too much performance hit - I ended up with 1/3 FPS. There are just too many places where water flows into the lake. After noticing this, I didn't bother with optimizing the CEG design...
So some shader would probably be the way to go if one wanted to improve the flowing water impression. But that's so far unknown terrain to me

Looks great to me, feel free to release a v2 of the map when you're finished!

Since you like it and I don't have any ideas for improvement, I consider the ssmf maps finished. It would feel weird if I would release your map since I just added a tiny bit of polish. So I would rather leave this to you

[Silentwings]

Uploaded v2 to Springfiles, with much thanks to qray.

[qray]

Sorry for late notice - wasn't around much here the last few days.
Unfortunately, the V2 doesn't work for me: the SMD file is empty.

[Silentwings]

Ok, will look at it when I have time.

Split generic discussion of water to viewtopic.php?f=13&t=33655.

[smoth]

It would only be splashing at areas where the water is crashing down or over rocks. for the most part it looks like you used blue in your erosion paths and that looks like it is a sort of slow trickle as the water is flowing directly to the lake within your caldera/crater.

[PicassoCT]

Needs a ice glacier to flow from into a fjord.. :)