Underwater Programmers Art Goes Extreme

i know it looks a lil amateurish, but it's the best i can do right now... anyways, it's posted on my site as a placeholder for the time being, till i get some time to work up a real site...



critiques and suggestions welcome... no loud laughing please...

--Mike

Looks good except it looks like it's in space and not underwater. Also the explosion doesn't seem to have any 'force'. The Sub seems to be going along on it's merry way rather than struggling to escape.

I don't get it. What role does the explosion play? Is it just there to fill space?

bubbles and waves to make the image 'dynamic'
the explosion doesn't light the submarine
btez

it's a depth charge Noel... don't be so dense :P

yeah tony, you're right... i totally forgot to add the caustic relection effects on the sub... i didn't even code that in yet... it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something that looks like it's from an underwtaer scene though... gonna work on that after a shower... and the sub could be rolled off at an angle, like it was recoiling from the explosion... good critique...

yup... lighting from the back... good one d...

--Mike

Oh, it is a sub - I thought it was a ship.

Looks like a ship to me. I thought subs were more cucumber shaped.

Your thinking of a modern sub, that ones the old school version ;)

Mabye somthing a bit more like the way SH3 does it....

Nice, but for a cover or ad I'd use a bigger texture for the front part of the sub. You may also add some noise to the image to prevent a washed out look. And maybe add some contrast.

You may use TextureWobbler to create an animated texture for the caustics. It's really a dedicated app for this kind of animation.

Using movie footage explosions in the game as well as on ads/cover etc. is ok, probably even adds it some kind of AAA feeling. Here's some free explosions and pyro fx:
http://www.detonationfilms.com/free_stuff.htm

good suggestions jfK... thx, i'm gonna experiment with some of what you suggested tommorrow (long day, fading fast)...

as for the second point you made, about the caustics... right now i've got it so that it automatically appears and moves across the length of the sub with the speed according to the speed of the sub...



i'm using rotatetexture(), and, while it doesn't look bad, is there another way to 'scroll' a texture?

i'm also gonna look at texture animation to see if that gives a better effect... more control over the direction the texture is 'scrolling'...

one additional thing... i've noticed some interesting differences regarding b3ds exported from Gile[s] and the same b3d exported from UltimateUnwrap...

with UUW i was able to export the mesh as a single mesh and this allowed me to blend a texture and play with it programmatically in order to get the reflections and movement... i didn't seem to be able to do this with the Gile[s] exported b3d...

also, the b3d from UUW can show the effects of lights (flickering for example), while i couldn't get the Gile[s] exports to do this also... is it the lightmap or something i'm missing???


Liberator... yeah, that's what i'm talkin' 'bout!!!!!

if only i was that good :) but then it wouldn't be programmers artwork then though, would it :)


--Mike

Yes. Use PositionTexture().

right in front of my eyes... jeez

thx... trying it now...

--Mike

probably Gile[s] is setting EntityFX to 1 by default, I guess you can change that. A good object for caustics studies are wales etc.. There may be some movies somewhere in the web.

The caustic effect is only visible on top of them. Not sure how far you want to go, but a proper solution would be an additional low poly hull that is using vertexAlpha to become more and more transparent on the sides and finally the bottom. you will then have to UVmap it in plane mode, using the X/Z plane only.

That said, you may have to fight Z-sorting troubles when using multiple Alpha objects (and I guess you will, with or without such a hull).

I think you can use an animated texture parallely to Positiontexture. So the animation will "wobble" and PositionTexture will show the motion of the sub.

Additionally you may try to use ScaleTexture depending on the (underwater) depth of the sub (the deeper, the bigger the caustics), not sure of that.

Yup. Caustics are caused by the movement of surface waves, so you do see "animating pattern" even when nothing is moving - unless it's dead calm in which case there are no caustics either?


Free caustics generator (can do animated stuff too):

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kand/caustics/

Wow Mustang, that is a nice freeware app! Thanks for the link. If I knew that I wouldn't have made TextureWobbler (that actually kind of works as well, but far from that quality!)

It's Coming...explosion. I get it.

Not bad. However, there is never any need for more than one exclamation mark.

More than one exclamation mark on the end of a sentence makes me cry.

Too much text: Sub Force is enough.
For the rest, let weapons speak. :)

How about some water bombs falling onto ths sub.
This way your explosion makes sense.