Water

You don't need to start a new thread. :frown:
 
IT IS a flat bump mapped surface.... Just goes to show how deceptive and great the effect is! :D
 
Originally posted by |MaTT|
IT IS a flat bump mapped surface.... Just goes to show how deceptive and great the effect is! :D
Click to expand...

Could they use different kind of water in different places? Nevertheless, the effect is amazing.
 
Originally posted by Reiska
Could they use different kind of water in different places? Nevertheless, the effect is amazing.
Click to expand...

It is possible. Even half life 1 included support for actual ripples in the water which as I recal was only used sometimes with the green radioactive liquid. The water I saw in the E3 video was ALL flat...

p.s. ive just re-read Bad^Hat's 1st line.... HL1 didnt even have bump mapping!!! Do you even understand what bump mapping is??
 
Check out the below picture...

hlwater.jpg


Notice at the point ive outlined in red where the water meets the edge... Its a straight line indicating the water is flat.
 
yes in that pic its flat, the water is only in a small puddle though. it would make no sense for it to have huge ripples. in halflife 1 you could set how much the water rippled. maybe there is a setting like that in halflife 2...


ps- im prolly wrong so....
 
Uh...

That screenshot is obviously very old. We've seen this same scene three times: in the screenshot, in the teaser movie, and at e3. And at e3, the scene is very different. First of all, the entire room has been re-designed (none of that awful triangle rock texture) Second of all, the teaser and screenshot have none of the splash/ripple effects that the e3 video has. In the e3 video you can also sort of see the water "lapping" up against surfaces in the room. That may still be from a single brush, but it looks very neat.

And the water in the OP shot sure LOOKS like it's rippling, rather than just an effect on top of a flat surface.
 
Assuming the tank of orange liquid in the E3 movie uses the same stuff as all the other water, it looks like it is moving at the top.
 
Just watched the Gamespot video (#4- the clip that's not in the 600MB Fileplanet video), which shows the same scene of the guard being attacked by the Hydra that's in the screenshot MaTT posted. Apos is right, the video that was shown at E3 is clearly much improved over the 'square-rock' screenshot.

But what really impressed me-- and what I think is so far the best water effect in any of the video scenes-- was when the guard jumps down into the pool. There's a very realistic splash and ripple effect in the pool (and again when he's picked up by the Hydra, and a third time when he's slammed back down).

Now I know this is one of the "semi-scripted" moments in the HL2 story, so the splash might be pre-designed for this scene, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't use the same effect throughout the game. I don't think it would be that hard. I'm sure it's not real fluid dynamics, just a semi-opaque animated effect (sprite?) layered onto the water, but it's convincingly realistic.

Has anybody else watched this?

Man, I have to think of some better way to spend my summer than obsessing over little details in these HL2 videos. Ah, but it's fun for now.
 
Hmmm....I never noticed that the triangle textures were fixed from the Gamespot vids...too bad I deleted them because of the horrible sound quality...damn you Fileplanet for not having that scene!

-Vert
 
The splashes are, without any doubt, simply dynamic parts of water physics. They appear to be either particle or sprite effects (And the ripples may be done with some sort of shader on the water surface), but they not only appear anywhere that something splashes in the water, but their height appears to be different depending on the size and force of whatever falls in.

I don't think they have directional splashing though: not that I've seen. Just collumns of splash that come straight up.
 
Originally posted by Argyll
Who really cares? It still looks amazing!
Click to expand...
It appears some people do... besides, when you're playing HL2, u probably won't have time to look at little things like ripple effects, otherwise some combine will put a bullet through poor Gordon's brain.
 
Perhaps even more impressinve than the guard's splash in the Hydra scene is the dune buggy scene where the manatee-shaped craft comes after Gordon. The rotor on the craft kicks up a huge cloud of dust as it passes across the dried seabed, and then watch when it passes over the water. You guessed it, a cloud of water vapour. Then the bullets from its strafe attack kick up realistic splashes of water where they hit.

From watching this, I'd have to agree with Apos (again!) that the water effects are dynamic and dependent on the force of the impact. Still hard to tell if there's any kind of directional spash, or if the water basically spouts straight up. I'd conclude that Source uses particle effects for splashes and the kind of vapour cloud, but it wouldn't work for real volumes of water (waves in pools, liquids spilling from containers, etc). Still, more than good enough for me! (Though spilling a vat of acid over some Combine soldiers would be way cool.
 
Whether or not there are nice splash and ripple effects it doesn’t change the fact that there is no undulation in the level of the water... It’s still a flat surface in all the videos.

Please do not misinterpret what i am trying to say as 'OMG this sux... HL2 will be crap... the water isn’t real...'. My real message is that developers are finally starting to use the effects that have for the most part been available to us for ages in everyone’s graphics cards! :)
 
it doesn’t change the fact that there is no undulation in the level of the water... It’s still a flat surface in all the videos.
Click to expand...

Despite the fact that, as we pointed out, you can see it undulating? It may still be defined by a single flat brush, but it's definately undulating. Even floating objects appear to "bob" in time with it.
 
You cant forget this is only a game. Sure the water doesnt look real but it looks pretty damn good. HL2 shows us tihngs in games that have NEVER been done before with any great effect. Even movies which can just fake all this stuff because its not being 'played' have trouble doing it but Half-Life 2 brings you something that looks great and can be interacted with in a way that hasnt been seen ever outside of the real world.
 
Originally posted by Apos
Despite the fact that, as we pointed out, you can see it undulating? It may still be defined by a single flat brush, but it's definately undulating. Even floating objects appear to "bob" in time with it.
Click to expand...

:dozey:

It isnt... Ive watched it several times.
 
I don't think it's just a blanc surface. Look at the walls, where it crosses with the water. It's hard to see even with the high resolution trailer...
 
Aah, the wonders of bump mapping and shaders.:bounce:
 
Originally posted by |MaTT|
Whether or not there are nice splash and ripple effects it doesn’t change the fact that there is no undulation in the level of the water... It’s still a flat surface in all the videos.
Click to expand...

What about the place on the bridge, when Gordon is in a harbor and meets to zombies?
Damn. For being a flat surface it looks real..not flat :p
This will be jsut lovely :thumbs:
 
The water isnt flat. I am sure off it. (dont ask why)
 
Look, let's just end this shall we?

The water is physically flat, but appears not to be. It can be disturbed.

:)
 
Judging only from the currently available videos, I'd have to say that the water appears to ripple, but doesn't really. It's basically a 2D effect on the surface of the water only. It refracts light and reflections "as if" it were rippling, but if you look at the edge of the water in the (now infamous?) Hydra scene, the edge of the water remains a straight line (well, a fixed curve anyway).

Note that the 'edge' of the water in this scene isn't the straight edge of the pool-- there are some half-submerged rocks that slope up to that edge that form the real waterline. It's not that obvious at first. The waves and ripples that appear in the middle of the water aren't visible at the edge. Waves don't undulate, changing the height of the water level where it meets the edge. So its only a rippling effect on a flat surface. Then again, it's a small pool, and I could be totally wrong.

The main point is that you have to look REALLY carefully to notice stuff like this, and it's not likely to bother anyone while playing the game. The main problem is that Valve have set the bar so high for themselves with this environment, that even little things that break the sense of perfect reality become noticeable.

I suppose this is the kind of useless trivialities were left to discuss as we anxiously await Sept 30.
 
and only some new material (that I dont want) woulc be able to result into new and exiting topics.

I wished Valve had waited with the pressrelease untill a week before releasedate.. that would be awsome.
 
It would be really hard to have water that moves randomly to what effect you have on it. Like changing the current or something. All they can do is simulate a hit splash in the water.

The new day of defeat has rain effect in the water according to where the water hits it, and it looks really good actually. I cant wait to see what mod makers will milk out of the engine in 3 years time.
 
The water is basically a shader effect that can be applied to any mesh/object. Naturally you would use a flat plane for pools, puddles etc (to save polygons) but there is absolutely no need to assume that the water has to be flat. I too saw no evidence of non-flat water in the e3 demo but the water in the screenshot Bad^Hat posted clearly isn't flat.
 
Yeah, Bad^hat's pic isn't flat, look at the water near the stocks. And |Matt|, of course the water is flat at your pic, it's inside a building, why wouldn't it be still?
And the pic is really old, look at the pointy thing sticking up the water, it isn't there in the video.
 
first of let me say that it's quite limited what we can see in screenshots and those vids.

second of I might have a hard time explaining myself on this subject since I'm not very much into the tech and stuff like that.

anyways...I think that |Matt| is right when he says that the normal water is just a flat surface(pixel shaded, bumpmapped) but...I think it is very possible for them to have made "real" ripples when stuff hits the water...it really wouldn't be that hard for them to make...assuming that the shader/bump mapping is just an effect applied to the flat surface of the water....you all saw how the engine could manage change the landscape in real time during the tech demo...I don't think it would be very difficult to apply this to the surface of the water in small areas where a collision is detected...
 
Its not so much when stuff hits the water that 'real' ripples could appear as in the current vids no 'real' undulating ripples appear in the tech demo, the zombie wood walk way scene or the hydra scene. Its the fact that there could be 'real' ripples in the top picture that interests me. So far we have not seen a scene in motion where the water has such a violently undulating look. All i want to know fir is the fact that real ripples would be a total FPS killer as the amount of polygons and CPU time required would be huge.
 
well judging from his behaviour in like the 2 mins he's been back I'd say it's very likely...
 
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