Nsomnia
March 1, 2016, 9:41pm
1201
,
Can you give us a quick list of what will be included in the next update?
I am hoping some of the items on my short list will be fixed in the next release:
The caustics should be visible when standing near shallow water, not just when under water. If I remove caustics from the Set Underwater Mode and put it in the PP Underwater volume blendables will that fix it?
Need an integration of Ultra Dynamic Sky with shader. The developer will not respond to e-mail. In the level BP, Set Underwater Mode, when using Ultra, the Wave Cue new volume will work, but the caustics and Set Intensity and Set Light Color do not, even when replacing the BP_Sky target intensity and color with an Ultra float and Linear Color to provide a new Sky Light Component. Also, tried plugging in the "Update sun’s rotation material parameter (SSS) into the “Ultra BP Set Material Variables”, can’t get that to work either.
Or, add “Ultra like” clouds and shadows to the Skydome_BP.
Swim and tread water animations
Character buoyancy when breaking the water surface plain, so it bobs with the waves while treading or swimming.
Water Line
Landscape Height modulation so I can stop waves encroaching on shoreline, and add my own swash, backwash, and wet function
Light rays integrated with the caustics during daylight hours.
A blocking volume function so underwater assets “stay dry.”
Function changing water color based on Z depth, like Black Flag.
Thanks for all your hard work. I understand, it is a spare time thing for you … I would gladly to speed things up or to get you to work on these issues … if people in the community like you do not work on it will not get done.
I don’t think EPIC gets it. Water is a big deal today. Even Unity and Blender are way ahead of us. UE4 is the only engine without it. I don’t need an engine that support a hundred square mile level, or better looking hair for our 1st person character, or planar reflections on only Samsung mobile apps. Maybe someone at the top of EPIC needs a baptism to understand our need for good water.
article explains the systemic problems with UE4 in a very supportive way:"You're on UE4, why do you need an engine programmer?"
One of the most beautiful games of all time, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, was developed on UE3. But to port it over to UE4 and Playstation 4 required their 8 person team to include a full time engine programmer to fix UE4 issues. In the article they talk about the same issues you face with shader, which are systemic to EPIC’s engine roadmap for UE4:
“the way screen-space reflections are culled on the sides of the screen in a trapezoid shape”
“depth-unaware blending of reflection cubemaps”
“translucent mesh rendering … scene colour texture resolve is done per mesh element, not per entire mesh”
“lightmaps are meant to contain indirect (bounced) lighting only … they don’t have specular highlights”
The “workarounds” in shader are great, but they create a form of spaghetti code that is not easy to work with and is just one engine upgrade away from not working.
Still, no pressure TK, but project is our only hope for realistic water.
A lot of these are still very specific implementations that TBH youll probably never see anytime soon or for free. Even commerical solutions have users do some of these on their own because the implemntations are project specific.