Could anybody help me decide on the best method for making a body of water based on these specifics?

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1

I want to have a very large body of water.
My player pawn can fly, so I want to get some kind of water distortion when he flies too close to it.

I figured the best method to achieve this would be with the technique known as Location Based Opacity, as shown here
v=XYPPd5oLoPM

That plus some particle effects should do the trick, I hope. (I’m open for different techniques, this one seemed the easier; though I’m not sure the most compatible)

Now, my problem is I can’t decide on a method of creating a swim-able body of water that would work well with me method above.
I want nice and big waves to happen in my water, but I’m afraid the most common methods wouldn’t be compatible with Location Based Opacity, since they would both be competing for creating distortions on the object’s geometry.

The most common techniques I’ve heard about are either mathematical Gerstner waves or overlapping heightmaps to create the motion waves effect.

I might be totally wrong about that, and they wouldn’t conflict at all, since I’m just somewhat familiar with node-based material creating inside the engine.

If anybody has any experience or enough knowledge to help me deciding on a method to creating my desired body of water, I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks in advance!

2

How exactly should it look like? -> should the water be deformed, or just an effect on the water? :slight_smile:

You can use tessellation + location based opacity -> just create a water plane + the material (some heightmaps that are moved with a panner) and then add the effect (either also do it with tessellation, or just use some normal maps to create a distrotion effect -> like they do it in the water tutorials that you can find on youtube)