[Community Project] WIP Weather & Ocean Water Shader

[DotCam]

All the AI code is in c++ . All it is are simple behaviors that have a hierarchy from most to least important:

1. Am I near the surface or the sea floor? avoid it this tick.
2. Am I near an enemy? GTFO this tick.
3. Are there any prey for me to eat? Chase them this tick!
4. Am I the leader? lead the pack this tick baby.
5. Am I a simple flocking fish? follow the leader and flock with my buddies this tick.

I tried to make it as simple as possible to set up a flock of fish in the ue4 environment, so a user with no c++ experience can add them to their game and customize the behavior by setting different variables.

I am very grateful for your help, I'll be sure to let you know if I need anything!
Komodoman

Oh that sounds perfect, and you just expose the end result of the AI decisions to the Fish's blueprint? That sounds great, try and expose as many parts as possible to blueprint so the user can adjust them, which it sounds like you already have been doing. This is really great, what you mentioned here:

I tried to make it as simple as possible to set up a flock of fish in the ue4 environment, so a user with no c++ experience can add them to their game and customize the behavior by setting different variables.

This is exactly how I wan't this project to be. There can be as much confusing code as we want behind the scenes but make all of that invisible to a level designer, or someone who works i blueprints only. That is my ultimate goal here with everything, I want anyone to be able to open it up and have fun with it.

So once again, looks great, there is no rush on the code assets at all, take you time! Once they are ready it would probably be easiest if you compress it into a Zip or Rar file (or 7z) so you can upload it to dropbox, google Drive, Mega, or others and send me a PM with the link.

You could also just post the link here in the forums if you would rather, but a PM would be better imo.

Thanks man!

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Also worth noting, the water samples have been released by Epic are now on the Learn Tab of the launcher, I will be going over them all tomorrow, hopefully I will find a few good nuggets of wisdom to incorporate into this project.

[Voodoo]

Also worth noting, the water samples have been released by Epic are now on the Learn Tab of the launcher, I will be going over them all tomorrow, hopefully I will find a few good nuggets of wisdom to incorporate into this project.

Awesome! I saw the water sample on the learn tab this morning very awesome indeed. I'm really excited to see what you implement into your water system Dotcam atm you are our Poseidon hehe Ocean Master. Good luck!!

[Komodoman]

Here's a video of flocks interacting with each other in a semi-realistic manner + My friend implemented new caustics, which look great!

[joshezzell]

ooh, nice caustics! I can't wait to see that implemented into this project.

[TorQueMoD]

When I tried to open the 0.2 demo map with buoyancy I get this error...

[DotCam]

Here's a video of flocks interacting with each other in a semi-realistic manner + My friend implemented new caustics, which look great!

That is looking great guys! I now have a few questions for you...

First is the water surface viewed from below, I'm guessing you added in another one sided material plane to get that effect while underwater? Or are you changing the base material values while underwater? I'm trying to decide which way to go on that, leaning towards modifying the material since there are already 2 plane meshes.
Second, those light shafts look great! Was this accomplished using a mesh plane "godray"? also are they placed manually or are they particles?
And of course the caustics, did you guys use a light function? Or is it added to the sea-floor material itself?

You guys are doing a really awesome job!! Thank you for posting up these videos here as well, it's great to see your progress on this.

When I tried to open the 0.2 demo map with buoyancy I get this error... [ATTACH=CONFIG]25985[/ATTACH]

That is really strange, I thought I had fixed that issue prior to uploading. They are 2 redundant variables which I removed from the blueprint, and then deleted the struct type they were created with. Somehow they were still referenced by the BP even though I had deleted them first, causing this error message.

Long story short, just press OK. They do not actually exist, so there is no harm in removing them. This has already been fixed in the master version.

[Komodoman]

That is looking great guys! I now have a few questions for you...

First is the water surface viewed from below, I'm guessing you added in another one sided material plane to get that effect while underwater? Or are you changing the base material values while underwater? I'm trying to decide which way to go on that, leaning towards modifying the material since there are already 2 plane meshes.
Second, those light shafts look great! Was this accomplished using a mesh plane "godray"? also are they placed manually or are they particles?
And of course the caustics, did you guys use a light function? Or is it added to the sea-floor material itself?

You guys are doing a really awesome job!! Thank you for posting up these videos here as well, it's great to see your progress on this.

I can answer the first question, but I'll have to wait a day or two to get back to you on the second one. My friend spent an all-nighter making the caustics, and we've been spending many hours a day since then awake (we had a tech demo today for our sponsor, it went well!). Anyway I need to ask him to get insight into how he worked the light shafts.

As for the material, yes we use a material plane, when the player is underwater we simply set your water to invisible. When you reach a certain part of the Z axes you actually become a different blueprint actor and that actor's possession sets your ocean to visible, and sets our plane to invisible. Ideally I think you would want to modify the material, we just haven't had enough time to learn ue4 materials yet with our project ending in 2 weeks.

I'll be sure to ask my friend about the light shafts. In fact I might convince him to create his own account and post !

Cheers,
Komodoman

[KITATUS]

Apparently the sun not moving issue was fixed in the latest preview build but it's not fixed with the sun / weather system in the current build of the Ocean project :/

[Ranmas]

Thanks for the great project.

I am currently working on a school project where we are using the material for our world. Unfortunately we have had a bit of a performance issue and have disabled the waves temporarily, but the water still looks pretty good.

We are thinking about trying to limit the tessellation and displacements to just being around the players, as apposed to calculating the entire world, but currently we don't know how well that will work with the multiplayer aspect of the game.

[DotCam]

@Komodoman: Thanks for the info! I think I will give a 3rd plane a try

Apparently the sun not moving issue was fixed in the latest preview build but it's not fixed with the sun / weather system in the current build of the Ocean project :/

Hmmm... I'l look into it again I probably missed something. Just for clarification you are using the most recent download of the skydome correct?

Thanks for the great project.

I am currently working on a school project where we are using the material for our world. Unfortunately we have had a bit of a performance issue and have disabled the waves temporarily, but the water still looks pretty good.

We are thinking about trying to limit the tessellation and displacements to just being around the players, as apposed to calculating the entire world, but currently we don't know how well that will work with the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Yeah that is a big problem with the material, it uses up a lot of resources... I am attempting to make it as realistic as possible, which only adds to the complexity. This makes it difficult to use in a game that targets lower end hardware.

One thing I have done for the upcoming version is reduce the Gerstner wave count to 8 instead of 16, which makes a big difference. I am doing this mainly because the extra ones aren't necessary when paired with a secondary noise function. The Gerstner waves control the large rolling surface while the smaller waves break it up to add more definition. This along with an LOD system has managed to reduce the performance impact while keeping (or even augmenting) the look of the ocean. I hope to have this out any day now....

For multiplayer the OceanManager code in C++ is an exact duplicate of the calculations used in the material, that could be useful for calculating the surface without actually rendering it. I have not tested this out, but I am pretty sure it should work.

[KITATUS]

@Komodoman: Thanks for the info! I think I will give a 3rd plane a try



Hmmm... I'l look into it again I probably missed something. Just for clarification you are using the most recent download of the skydome correct?

Indeed! Can't see anything out of the ordinary in the Blueprint.

[DotCam]

Indeed! Can't see anything out of the ordinary in the Blueprint.

Well that is really strange... I just unzipped a fresh copy of the project from the upload for 4.6.1, then converted it to 4.7 p8, and the sun/moon work perfectly.

I think I may know why you are having issues though, this isn't well documented (sorry)... If you migrate the Skydome out you will need to set the DirectionalLight manually using this drop-down box:



I can confirm that without the directional light set, nothing will rotate. Double check that, hopefully that is the issue.

[KITATUS]

Well that is really strange... I just unzipped a fresh copy of the project from the upload for 4.6.1, then converted it to 4.7 p8, and the sun/moon work perfectly.

I think I may know why you are having issues though, this isn't well documented (sorry)... If you migrate the Skydome out you will need to set the DirectionalLight manually using this drop-down box:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]26349[/ATTACH]

I can confirm that without the directional light set, nothing will rotate. Double check that, hopefully that is the issue.

Nah, I've tried that a few times. Still not moving. When I can, I'll try download again and migrate it again :/

[DotCam]

Nah, I've tried that a few times. Still not moving. When I can, I'll try download again and migrate it again :/

If you Zip up just the blueprint asset file and post a link here I can look into it for you? I don't know what might have happened but I have had issues with the default values of variables (or value/slider ranges) resetting to 0 when migrating between projects. That would be the first place I would look, it's happened twice out 3 bp's I migrated in the past few days. Feel free to upload it and leave a link, I'l see what I can do.

[DotCam]

Nah, I've tried that a few times. Still not moving. When I can, I'll try download again and migrate it again :/

Also a quick note just in case, the Time Scale value is set to 1 by default, which is 1min game-time = 1min real-time, try setting it to like 1000 to make sure.

If that is still not it can you clarify the issue for me? I saw in another thread it mentioned the sun moved for half a day and then quit. Is that your issue, or does the sun/moon not rotate at all? If it doesn't rotate at all, where is the sun related to time of day? is it right at noon straight up, or closer to the horizon (like 4pm/9am)? Thanks man.