[Community Project] WIP Weather & Water Shader

NilsonLima · April 27, 2018, 11:30am

Sir_Manfred:

Thanks, I think I got it to work. It seems that sometimes it doesn’t update but that might be a memory on my side. Not sure yet.

As for memory, when you insert the heightmap into the modulation, that’ll eat a lot of memory I imagine. Especially if you have a 16 bit heightmap @ 8k resolution. (Like I do).
Would it be possible to modify the blueprints and shader to allow for a smaller sized 8-bit heightmap?
Alternatively, do you think it would be possible to do modulation based on Distancefields instead? Like using distance to nearest surface, for example. Though I guess there would be interference from other objects with distance fields…

Another thing I’ve been thinking about doing is to use a flowmap for wave direction. Mainly so that the waves travel towards the island and not necessarily away from it. I think perhaps a couple of gerstners could go the other way to fake some sorts of wave-bounce-thingy. Has been tried before?

You can feed 8-bit, since it uses a Texture2D class inside the code and do:

Tex2D-&gt;SRGB = true;
Tex2D-&gt;CompressionSettings = TC_VectorDisplacementmap;
Tex2D-&gt;UpdateResource();

meaning that even if you feed 16bit it will become 8bit which is the VectorDisplacement format.

Using Distance Fields will get interference from other objects, so it is required to mask out anything else which is not a Landscape, I am not sure yet how to accomplish it. Other objects you can use a SphereMask or BoxMask inverted and multiplied by the GetDistanceToNearestSurface node, but it wont work since there might be other objects in physical contact with the Landscape while inside the water mass, which in the end will make the modulation weird.

For the wave direction thing thou, there might be other ways to make it work. If you are not with the camera above (flying in the sky) and following the cost, you can change the Wave Direction vector to face the camera, but to be a good effect, it must be really smoothed out to not get pops coming from the sudden change in direction. way suppose you walk arond the entire island, it would appear the waves are always crashing to the shore. Its easier said then done, think in a situation you just give your back to the , where the direction should point to? Now think you are now with the at your left or your right side, where the direction should point? With in mind, you need to smooth the change into the direction as much as you can, meaning the more you are facing the (90 degrees) the wave direction would be 100% facing the camera and a scalar to smooth the lerping to a different angle when moving to face the opposite direction. The nodes will get tricky, because you can walk into a hill and see both sides of the Island and when you rotate the camera, funny pops might appear.

I know you will need to read the text above more than twice to picture the scene described, Im sorry but speaking my mind in another language to describe my thoughts can result in long and not well ponctuated sentences.