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Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 4:34 pm
by Perlenstern
Hello All

I need some help with my fountain. I want to animate the water falling down from top to the bottom.
I've tried the the tutorial "simple animated water" from your wiki.
I get a animation, but not in the correct direction and a little bit to slow. And after animation I see only a half of my water.
Sorry but I can't discribe it in a better way.

screen_ 29-Mar03.jpg
So It looks for me
screen_ 29-Mar03.jpg (53.98 KiB) Viewed 3603 times


I can't attach the blend file because it is to big to attach.If anybody want to have the blend file to help me....please PN me


Thank to all

The Perlenstern

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 4:41 pm
by boblishman
there is an excellent tutorial here:

http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/Forum ... 9863#p9863

this will explain about the speed and (wrong) direction of your water animation ...

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:30 am
by Christian Walther
Seeing only the back half of the water is caused by having the normals the wrong way around. Make sure that the normals point outward by choosing Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside (to check, you can display the normals by pushing the Draw Normals button in the Mesh Tools More panel), and that your object does not have any negative scale factors in the Object > Transform Properties window (use Object > Clear/Apply > Apply Scale/Rotation to ObData to get rid of them).

That will make the front half of your water visible and hide the back half. For transparent surfaces like these, it probably makes sense to make them two-sided, so that both front and back are visible. I don't remember how to do that, but you should find it if you search for it.

Side note: it looks like some of your objects cast dynamic shadows. You should disable these for static objects as they are quite taxing on the engine. Turn off the Shadbuf button in the Links and Pipeline panel of the Material buttons for that. Simulate the shadows with vertex colors or textures (light maps) instead.

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 4:41 am
by Jojon
For the twosided thing:

Edit mode -> select all faces that should be twosided -> ctrl-F (Face specials menu) -> Face mode set -> set "Twosided" and "Shared" (same texture on back and front). This is a boolean operation, so any other flags are left untouched.

There are other ways to set this, but this is the one I, for one, prefer.

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 5:37 am
by Whilyam
I'm thinking Perlen might be having issues with the fountain's rock drawing in front of the water. Doesn't that mean messing with the pass indexes or similar?

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 8:21 am
by Christian Walther
Ah yes, that could be the case too. Hard to judge from that perspective.

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 9:48 am
by diafero
The issue is that the back half of the fountain water can be seen (the one you see from inside),l but the fron half, which you should see from outside, can not be seen. As far as I understood it, it is not drawn behind the rock but not at all.

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:09 am
by boblishman
having has a closer look at the picture ... I tend to agree with Christian... it does look like the water mesh is "inside out"

if it was me ... I would select the water mesh, go into Edit mode, and then edit/normals/flip ... export your Age .... and check it in Uru

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 12:02 pm
by Perlenstern
Hello All

Thank you for so many tips. I'll check up all in the next week and after that I'll show you my fountain again.....hope it looks better.

The Perlenstern

Re: Please help me with my fountain

PostPosted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:51 pm
by Perlenstern
Hello All

I've tryed many things and what a wonder I get a slow animation. I see all may water, but now I have new problems.
I'll give you two pictures with red marks. There is a cut in the texture wich will come and come again in the animation.

Brunnen1.jpg
Brunnen1.jpg (5.44 KiB) Viewed 3422 times


Brunnen2.jpg
Brunnen2.jpg (6.37 KiB) Viewed 3421 times



I think my problem is not only the correct animation....my problem will be the correct UV-Mapping.
I have got many problem with the right unwrapping of objects.
So I'll give you a picture of my object and perhaps you can explain me how to unwrap that correctly.
So that my water will follow the red arrows after animation.

Brunnen3.jpg
Brunnen3.jpg (5.4 KiB) Viewed 3425 times



Thanks to all for teaching and helping beginners.

The Perlenstern

P.S. Perhaps is anybody here who can explain me something in german in a PN