Water Transparency Possibilities

moodflow · August 01, 2007, 11:15:58 AM

Hi all,

This is what I am hoping water transparency will look like when finalized. Though the rocks/textures are 100% TGTP, I used photoshop to compose them into a final image. There is no known way to do this natively within TGTP at this point that I know of. But I wanted to see what transparency could possibly look like when implemented. The image demonstrates water transparency, color, and depth blur, with additional subsurface scattering to a slight degree...

We have a soft shadows workaround, and now a possible transparency workaround (though it requires minor 3rd party work). I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a new TGTP update

Many thanks to the Planetside team for their work so far!

old_blaggard · August 01, 2007, 11:53:36 AM

That would be nice - it does look like TG 0.9 water, actually, except without that sharp line.

rcallicotte · August 16, 2007, 10:42:10 PM

Man, moodflow, this is great work. I hope to learn how to do rocks and terrain like this as well as implement new water transparency without any third-party tricks.

moodflow · August 17, 2007, 07:26:13 PM

Yea same here... I can't wait until transparency is supported.

Cyber-Angel · August 18, 2007, 12:19:50 AM

You might want to have a look at this paper if you haven't already http://www.cs.utah.edu/vissim/papers/water/ before implementing water transparency and such I am not sure weather the methods described are sutible or not but it might be worth a look.

Regards to you

Cyber=Angel

Oshyan · August 18, 2007, 01:07:01 AM

Quote from: Cyber-Angel on August 18, 2007, 12:19:50 AM
You might want to have a look at this paper if you haven't already http://www.cs.utah.edu/vissim/papers/water/ before implementing water transparency and such I am not sure weather the methods described are sutible or not but it might be worth a look.

Regards to you

Cyber=Angel

Ironically Terragen (0.9) is mentioned and used in the paper itself. As for the results, none of the water looks particularly remarkable to me. The transparent water in particular looks kind of mediocre, if not poor.

- Oshyan

jo · August 19, 2007, 09:36:34 AM

Hi Oshyan,

Quote from: Oshyan on August 18, 2007, 01:07:01 AM
Ironically Terragen (0.9) is mentioned and used in the paper itself. As for the results, none of the water looks particularly remarkable to me. The transparent water in particular looks kind of mediocre, if not poor.

Even more ironically, every single image is rendered using TG v0.9. You just need to look at them to tell that. In figure 4 you can see the water polys bleeding up onto the terrain, before that bug was fixed. I don't know why they did that, but it smacks of plagiarism or possibly fraud, I don't know. I believe the whitecaps are rendering using my plugin, and I think the transparency is rendered using Sean's Opacity plugin from SOPack. Weirdness.

Regards,

Jo

Oshyan · August 19, 2007, 01:40:12 PM

I thought the same Jo, but if that's true then the entire paper is fraudulent I think, since it shows none of their own results. I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt - perhaps they just exactly reproduced TG's rendering results, bugs and all.

- Oshyan

moodflow · August 19, 2007, 01:44:28 PM

I hate to say it, but I really wasn't impressed by that paper at all. I think most of us here already know everything that they mentioned (well atleast from what I read).

However, I'm still giving Cyber-Angel a good thanks for posting it though...anything to keep progress moving.

Superiorgamer · August 19, 2007, 02:05:01 PM

Woots, this is one thing i've been looking forward to. I just hope we can choose the depth of it and all that like .9

Cyber-Angel · August 19, 2007, 06:26:16 PM

It confirms certain suppressions I had about this to begin with that I should have made known, I came across this paper while I was looking at a 3D engine called the Typhoon 3D Engine http://gameprog.it/hosted/typhoon/ if you look under the water tab there if you read about the water techniques it uses it cites the method presented in that paper as one used, and clearly form the screen-shots that engines water looks nothing like the water created with Terragen 0.9.43.

I just thought the method for water transparency maybe of interest...looks like it might not be but I will keep looking maybe the Siggraph paper archive will have some thing more useful, what good is research if it doesn't filter down into product that people can use?

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

efflux · August 20, 2007, 07:07:00 PM

Cool post work.

I like the music on your website. Sounds quite William Orbit.

moodflow · August 20, 2007, 08:38:24 PM

Quote from: efflux on August 20, 2007, 07:07:00 PM
Cool post work.

I like the music on your website. Sounds quite William Orbit.

Thanks! I'm a big fan of William Orbit. I listen to his stuff sometimes when working on scenes...

efflux · August 20, 2007, 09:13:10 PM

William Orbit is one of my favourite producers. His sound is superb and his own music is good as well. If you listen to Madonna's Ray Of Light on a really top end hifi, it sounds awesome. I do music myself but got bogged down in technology the last few years. I'll come through that soon though and get some new music done but I must not go off on a tangent here about music.

RealUser · August 21, 2007, 03:36:02 AM

And it seems they didn't know the renderer of TG0.9 very well. The images show the lack of understanding the features TG 0.9. provides to produce satisfying water and transparency. It's a shame!