Beautiful waterfalls

Hello,

So I’ve been wondering on what the workflow is for a performance-friendly beautiful waterfall.

Something like this.

https://fbcdn-photos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-0/1455928_736815776473680_626864163543168616_n.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=493fd9a0321dd756560c206fdb887cb6&oe=562982AC&gda=1446039360_5b91cb199044346ab71f5175e5d6a305

Any ideas?

+1 looking for a solution as well :slight_smile:

Or maybe this one

https://scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/t31.0-8/11141742_749498918538699_6282981646391870285_o.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9

I think having a scrolling waterfall texture with Fresnel might be a good start.

Allong with this

I made a waterfall a little while back for a project and just used a couple planes with moving textures on them. I then augmented it with some particle effects. It didn’t look awesome but then again I didn’t spend much time on it. Have you taken a look at the particle effects cave demo? There are several waterfalls and water effects in there.
Here’s my quick attempt, You could take this way further:
?t=9m33s

I assumed it would be mesh, but how to make it flow so perfectly with the terrain like in the two pictures I’ve posted. But I will check out the particle effects demo. Thanks.

The outpost23 new unreal tournament’s map has a nice waterfall in the background. Not sure how it’s made tho.
Right at the start of this video you can see it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lylzRC1uFg
And I’m running this map at 240 fps, so it’s optimized hehe!

I tried a thing.

How did you did this?

-First I added the rocks and populated the map;
-Exported everything to 3ds max;
-Made a power by 2 square plane covering the area where the waterfall will be;
-Baked the area as a heightmap in 3ds max;
-Imported in Mudbox to smoothen out the baked heightmap, export;
-Put the heightmap in World Machine, added just an erosion filter and put the erosion on the lowest setting, output the flow map;
-Use displacement modifier on the plane with the heightmap you exported in mudbox;
-Used the ProOptimizer modifier to make the mesh simple and removed faces that were useless, did not add tot he shape and faces that would not be seen;
-Exported the simplified mesh, which will be the waterfall mesh;
-Made a simple material and applied the flow map outputted in World Machine as opacity mask.

Thanks! It look really good, the only problem is that it needs one mesh/waterfall and you cannot edit waterfall after that :frowning:

Yeah the textures and meshes are unique. But luckily we have Material Instances.

I used vertex painting with HeightLerp for this one, and gpu particles for the water spray.
But maybe not that performance friendly :confused: but easy to change the areas where I want the water to be.

78e6c84f90b9bc10c11ff12928f9cf927b96c30b.jpeg