Wave generator

[Wchris]

When i see Shadmar's water screenshot I remember old LE 2.x days when Josh tryed to make seawater and waves. There was a cool demo with a beach and a floating wood branch.

 

By the time I had found the result was nice but not good enought for some so it was dropped in favor of an animated texture.

 

The main issue was the waves that would be parallel to the beach on one side of the island, but perpendicular on the other sides. Of course perpendicular waves look unnatural, but the animation had no way to know the islands location.

 

My idea to solve this would be to add a new feature to the editor. A special asset called "Wave generator"

 

It would be a line (or a spline to make the maths more funny and not boring ^^) we could place in the editor, with, in the middle, an arrow for direction indicator.

 

we cloud set the line/spline size, orientation, distance to beach, wave height, wave "decay" rate, spawn interval.

 

it's not trivial because you'll have to manage automatic decrease of spawn interval when camera is far away, and don't compute waves out of camera view but still move the line, and of course do all the 3D stuff.

 

i'm sure people would love positionning their waves in the editor :-)

Cheers

 

PS: I imagine the wave line would work a bit like moving a "vertex magnet", but of course I don't know what's technicaly the best way.

[martyj]

The best way to do waves would be a gemometry shader in GLSL. Pass in specific data such as a wave height, noise level, or whatever you want.

 

Something like this might be a good starting place where you can get something running in less than an hour.

http://jayconrod.com/posts/34/water-simulation-in-glsl

[Wchris]

By waves I mean Sea Waves with foam that progress to the shore, not just water wobling.

Like in this image

 

Also I prefer staying at the practical/theory level because Josh knows better how to do it technically.

[martyj]

The same principle applies to waves at the shore.

 

Can't believe I'm going to show this, but if you watch this video here:

 

You can see the water at the shore has a moving in and out motion.

 

You would just need to program your waves to be in parallel with the shore at any given instance.

[Wchris]

You would just need to program your waves to be in parallel with the shore at any given instance.

This brings us back to the initial problem, an island is round... how to make them parralel when an island is round ?

 

Also I speak from the waves in the back in the picture, not the foam on the beach.

Anyway Josh & Sharmar will do a better job than me, that's why I prefer using the suggestion box.

[martyj]

How does real nature do waves on an island?

 

Waves on the ocean are just a mathematical wave function.

 

Good news is that you don't need to behave like nature. Just appear to behave like nature.

 

Have all waves maybe converge towards the players position?

[Wchris]

How does real nature do waves on an island?

In real nature waves are produced by the wind (depends on wind force, duration, distance) and near the island the seabed irregularities have an influence. Without wind, no waves.

The problem is we don't have the processing power to fully simulate this in a game. My idea is exactly to manually simulate the wind effect and start waves in a given direction.

 

Have all waves maybe converge towards the players position?

this wont work with spectator camera or airplanes views.

We could set the island center point, but this would not work is the island shape is a crescent or another fancy shape.

 

PS: anyway since my solution is not a math puzzle, chances are very low Josh will be interrested by the idea