Ripples and Wavesets

[Justintime9]

I was just testing wavesets for the first time, and decided I might as well learn about ripples as well. I went through the tutorial and completed it succesfully. When I linked into the age, it worked perfectly, all except one thing:



now, I'm aware that the tutorial was originally written to be used in animated water, but it looked like it should work with wavesets too. I set the passindex to 5, and it still didn't work. Is it possible for ripples to work in waveset water?
Also, for some reason, the ripple has a shadow o_O

[Paradox]

Going from memory here... you need to set the following for your ripples:

1 - Click the TRANSP button in the Object Properties
2 - In the material settings, set ZOffs to 1
3 - Set PassIndex to a number larger than 1

If those don't resolve the problem, try setting the ZTransp button in the material settings. If that still doesn't work, you can force it into a later span using AlcScript.

[Jonnee]

Ok, you have a waveset and another object on it with an animated ripples texture.
Make sure that the ripples are a bit higher or lower on the Z axis than the waveset.
Now it depends on where the ripples are: If you put them a bit under the waveset then give passindex 0 to the ripples and give passindex 1 to the waveset. That means that at first the engine will draw your ripples and after that it draws the waveset that's above.
You can't put both objects on the same Z-position...

[Justintime9]

Thx, that did it

Edit: there's also a problem with the wavesets: when the avatar is standing, or looking in a certain way, and almost has his back turned to the waveset, it disappears. Any idea what could be causing that?

[Paradox]

Is your waveset mesh flat? If it is, you may have bounding box issues which will cause it to disappear when it is near the edges of the viewport.

[Justintime9]

What do you mean by flat? My waveset is a grid, so it's not a box or anything. if its disappearing is caused by bounding box issues, how might I fix it?

[Jonnee]

How did you build the ground of your lake (or whatever)? Is it a simple plane with just a front- and no backside?
Then give the ground the passindex 0, your ripples get passindex 1 and the waveset passindex 2. That could fix it.

[Paradox]

Wavesets must be modelled to the bottom on the water. They cannot be a flat mesh, they must have depth, otherwise there will be bounding box issues.

[Justintime9]

Well, I have 3 different pools in my test age, each with a different waveset. I fixed the two small ponds easily, by duplicating, parting, and adding their walls to their waveset, then cutting off the wall down to the center. They no longer disappear when not in view. However, I also have a large pond with a very uneven floor.

As a test, I selected the complete floor of the pond, duplicated, parted it, and made it my waveset instead. This solved the big pool's problem, but the edges of the waveset were visible above the depression of the ground, and a few other problems. Since that worked in solving my disappearing problem, but caused problems with the edges, I went back to my plane waveset, but this time made it 3D:



unfortunately, this didn't fix the problem, although it worked fine with all the other ones.

[Nadnerb]

some part of your waveset mesh must be at water level for the bounding box to be written correctly. meaning.. don't move it down below the ground, just push down the middle part of the waveset, and leave the edges at water level.