[?] long river waterplanes, the best way?

[Bluto Blutarsky]

Hi guys,
i'm working on this 4x4 map and i'm looking for the best way to reproduce the river



dark blue = water
light blue = gravel river bed

i don't want to use the seawater level because the river is not so flat (there is a 20mt gap between north and south ends) so i guess i must create new waterplanes based on the river shape (like fushe) to got the bests results instead of using the quinling rectangles (also because i need to use about 20 pieces) and the waterfalls workaround

the last question is about the water stream direction, there is only a stream direction for all the water objects o i can give a direction for every piece? i've found nothing about on the forum (probably cuz i'm a noob =P) and i try to understand it by demolishing qinling but seems there only a direction for the water, anyone can confirm? should be bad while reproducing a narrow S shaped river...



tnx for the support =)


Blutarsky

[Rudd]

Yeah there's only one direction for the river, most players won't notice if the direction isn't right, especially if you have a slow anim speed.

I'd guess you could probably get away with doing at least half the river with sealevel, then you'd need waterplanes to do the rest. I'd say just use qinling planes until a modeler can do you custom ones - so that you can get the shape 100% right before the modeler starts work.

[sylent/shooter]

hmmm, also I have a problem with water planes, they are showing up ingame without any water texture on them. Instead they are a light blue that glitches. Anything to fix that? maybe make new envmaps?

[Rudd]

you need envmaps and to lightmap the waterplanes

[Rhino]

You should use sea water as much as you can as its the most optimized, uses the terrain's lightmaps etc.

As for waterplanes, your best off making custom ones, they are about the simplest object you can possibly make for BF2, its just a plane with a texture applied to it but I wouldn't bother with crazy shapes like Fushe etc has unless your trying to avoid something (like the OGT rice paddy water, trying to avoid going outside the rice paddies). One thing you should really look into thou is making custom LM UVs for these as without them, your lightmaps will be seriously unoptimized, which as you can see with my qinling water that I made before I knew about custom LM UVs, 80% of the LM has gone to waste...


This tut here goes into most details, although where it says ch5 its actually ch9: BF2 Statics Advanced Lightmap Tutorial

As rudd said, direction of water is global to the map, but you could use a river rapid effect like I do on Qinling but I would really not recommend it, without at least making a new effect first as Qinling ones have buggy sounds and are not very good

[Bluto Blutarsky]

Really thanks guys =)

i tryed to use the seawater for the first quarter but i realize that i need it lower to be able to build some undergound stuff later so i think i will try to build all the river by waterplanes, i hope it will not result in a too heavy or buggy final work

to avoid a huge boring tile work with small existing planes i'll try to make a new really big one first, i have the river and the river bed vector shapes somewhere so it should be easy to create a planes from that, also for a 3d editor noob like me, but the question is if a 1.5x4 km plane will work peacefully or not, at least we will know by this test =)

As rudd said, direction of water is global to the map, but you could use a river rapid effect like I do on Qinling but I would really not recommend it, without at least making a new effect first as Qinling ones have buggy sounds and are not very good

Yes i think i'll use a very slow water animation to avoid the monodirectional stream as Rudd suggest and without rapid effect first, also because it should appear a quite river like in shija, shallow and really slow

For the LM i'll follow your guidelines as ever tnx =)

I'll keep u updated hoping that 5km river will not stop the whole work too much



Really thanks again
appreciated