I’ve been testing out the Water Body actors. With the Lake, for example, I get a nice wake behind the player as I walk through the water. Also, a WaterZone is created along with the lake.
When I add just a Water Body Custom, no WaterZone is added, and I do not get a wake from the player as I walk through it. I have added a WaterZone and sized it to encompass the Water Body Custom, but still no wake. I also noticed that the Water Body Custom is directly using the mesh assigned rather than the procedural mesh used by the other water bodies (e.g., Water Body Lake).
What is the intent here?
Should the Water Body Custom work with the simulation to support a wake? If so, am I missing something in setting it up?
Should it be able to use the procedural mesh(like the Lake) for the water (which has a smooth LOD)?
Or should it only be able to use an assigned static mesh, limited to the density of that mesh for producing a water surface?
For an area without a landscape, where I would want a patch of water that produces a wake, is Water Body Custom the correct choice? Or should I just use a Water Body Lake and uncheck “Affects Landscape”?
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Hi Jared,
How is your current water setup configured? Are you using the Advanced Water Default Shallow Water System?
It’s valid to use a WaterBodyLake with Affects Landscape disabled in areas without a Landscape. In the WaterZone, disable Auto Include Landscapes As Terrain and add a WaterTerrain Component to another Actor to define the WaterZone’s “Ground level”. This allows you to change the ground (Z position) of the lake when there is no landscape.
There are two systems the water system uses : Ripples are just a material effect created by scrolling normals over the water whereas true waves are handled by vertex displacement in the shader with the ComputeGerstnerWaves functions.
Custom water bodies are designed to function independently from the dynamic water zone system. Custom water bodies do not require a WaterZone actor and the rendered mesh doesn’t use the standard water quad tree but instead uses a custom static mesh. The static mesh can be changed via the Water Mesh Override property and collision is handled by the collision on the UStaticMesh. Your static mesh will need to be tessellated if your looking to use true displacement waves with the Custom Water Body.
Hope this information helps - let me know if you have further questions.
Cheers,
Jared
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Thank you for the information!
Yes, I was looking into using the shallow water sim that is present in the water bodies. But, if I had something like a basement in a building, I figured placing a custom water body would utilize the shape to mask the procedural water mesh which would be handy. I did partially get there with the lake, but I do think I was missing some of the settings you outlined there to get it working well.
Is there a way to get the custom water body to interact with the shallow water sim? Assuming the mesh is tessellated enough, it could visually be feasible, but the system itself doesn’t seem to support it out of the box… at least that I could find.
Basically, for applications like a flooded room, is the intended solution to utilize the lake (if you want a nice wake behind the player)?
Thanks again!
-Jared
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Hi again!
I believe both using a lake or custom water body could be possible in this scenario. Assuming the tessellation is configured as described you should still be able to enable the Advanced Water plugin and drag in a Shallow Water River actor. Then, in the Source River Water Bodies property you can add your custom water body (any water body can be added here despite the property using the “river” identifier*).* A more in-depth video shows this setup on default river actors: Baked River Simulations - Overview and Quick Start | Tutorial. This video also highlights how tags may be used to enable custom colliders.
I believe the limitation with custom water bodies here is that they only utilize a single spline point’s Water settings (unlike the river/lake where individual spline points can define their own Depth/Velocity/etc along the waterbody). Using a lake is also a valid method as described previously. You can move the spline points to fit the bounds of the room and define a custom Floor/Ground Level with a Water Terrain Component.
Cheers,
Jared
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Thanks!
That gives me a good idea on what to use where. I’ll being trying these out here in the not too distant future.
-Jared
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