A hmm moment on wavsets.

[GPNMilano]

I've been thinking about wavsets lately. Before I tried a test export to see if it would work I thought I'd run this by the developers and ask them. Is there any reason we can't use wavsets as both water surfaces, and waterfalls? Would it be possible to position a wavset so that it's pivot point and surface appears to be vertical rather than horizontal? Or is this beyond Plasma's capabilities?

[dendwaler]

Should it not be a trick similar as what is done in relativity?

You could try to make a waveset in relativity and see what happens when you go to one of the other world axis.
The blend file is posted somewhere

[Sirius]

Is there any reason we can't use wavsets as both water surfaces, and waterfalls?

Plasma doesn't use the vertex Z position as a "Z position"... well, in fact it does and doesn't.

Let me explain.


The water surface is supposed to be at the same height as the water's origin. In theory, every vertex is at the same height. Any transformation applied to the object's coordinate will result in the mesh you see in Blender, with a scale of 0 on the Z axis. So a plane with a rotation of 90° won't be seen in the scene (since it will look like a very thin line).


Plasma uses the Z coordinate of the vertex to calculated the depth of the water volume (and thus, water reflectivity, transparency, and density (transparency depending of viewing angle). These values can also be tweaked manually with vertex colors).
That's why Cyan often creates water meshes that match the pond shape when you see them in Blender (have a look at Gira, for instance).


However, I noticed that if Plasma meets a vertex that is ABOVE the origin's height, the vertex' Z position is USED. Some of your ponds' edges may therefore climb up and fade as they rise.
I assume this was added to make shores, as if waves could climb up a bit the shore before dying.


For more info and mathematical madness, go here.

[Christopher]

For more info and mathematical madness, go here.

Thanks for that. I searched month for the mathmatic behind wavesets...

@Chloe: Karkadann played with something similar (a Stargate IIRC). The conclusion was, that it doesn't work in any way.

Christopher

[Karkadann]

I remember that, I tried to put a wave set on a vertical plane to make a stargate, it was interesting and it may be useful for something but it did not look anything like a wave set, Im thinking you may be able to make a python file to fix the issue, but I dont know. Animated textures might be you best bet here

[Sirius]

Im thinking you may be able to make a python file to fix the issue, but I dont know. Animated textures might be you best bet here

Python scripts are useful to tweak the game's logic, and change the position of objects. The API is quite poor when it comes to rendering... especially with built-in stuff.
Animated textures could do though, you would need to pre-render them, but you might lose the distorsion of the reflected world.

Plasma uses the Z coordinate of the vertex to calculated the depth of the water volume (and thus, water reflectivity, transparency, and density (transparency depending of viewing angle)).

I made a small mistake here: the Z position shouldn't affect density since it's a constant value, specific to water.

[Tsar Hoikas]

Fortunately, we now have the client source code, so we can add new shaders and special effects

[Sirius]

Can't wait for it !
Especially when I see how different can look an old game like Morrowind with its Overhaul mod.

[Karkadann]

their is something on page 91 in the Cyan documentation for the plasma plug-ins under "VERTEX/PIXEL SHADING" called Bubble, something from Myst 5 that might help but it may take a bit of .........reprogramming by the Grey Hats cuz its from a later game engine. It may have worked perfectly for the StarGate or a water fall but its not included in the plug-ins for some technical reason.

[Sirius]

It creates a wave-like effect on a geometry, indeed, but it seems it also handles all the pedestals in the Age (linking technology), plus the Slates, and maybe even the cubemap of the bubbles...
At least that's all that is missing from Myst V PRPs and therefore broken in CC.
It might be a bit hard to rewrite the whole thing.