Water reflections

[j1angel1v]

First off let me start by saying, I know that water is one of the hardest things possible to simulate and programme, and I think the water effects that we have in Planco are stunning in daylight scenarios...
BUT...

I’m a huge fan of dark rides, and have had some of most enjoyable hours on planco designing and programming show elements for dark rides... one thing that is consistently letting me down though is the way the water effects do not react to any kind of lighting effect... they only vary depending on the ambient/natural light. To the point of some barely even showing up in the dark at all.

maybe what I’m asking is beyond the realms of programming possibility, I don’t know, but I see lighting being far more responsive in FPS games i.e. hero walking through jungle at night with barrel torch on gun sees waterfall etc... so I know it’s possible... I just wish we had it here!

 

[lilibat]

Yup this is the Black Water bug. It also affects other things like the spider webs, sheer curtains, and smoke effects. It gets brought up regularly, often by me since it is my number one pet peeve in game. I'm not sure it can be fixed in the current engine.

 

[j1angel1v]

I’m not sure I’d call it a bug personally... it’s the way the water particles are programmed... they are essentially designed to just be a mixture of plain colours (blues and whites mostly), in the same way that solid objects are made of a mixture of plain colours, but because the particles in water effects are animated there is no reference point for the simulated light to bounce off... it’s down to minimising GPU usage... we’re at a point now though with home/game computing that it should be possible without crashing the frame rate to something unusuable.

 

[HeatherG]

i guess with the way things are if u need if something to be seen in the dark you need a little light. I usually set the color to a grey or dark grey so it’s not to bright. Works well with Colorable Area Light.

 

[shaneturner12]

From what I've seen (doing my own testing with real life water) it normally appears black if there's no light present (that's natural or man-made lighting)

Shane

 

[j1angel1v]

i guess with the way things are if u need if something to be seen in the dark you need a little light. I usually set the color to a grey or dark grey so it’s not to bright. Works well with Colorable Area Light.

Unfortunately with water and other SFX elements this doesnt help because of the way they're programmed... and the area light isn't focussed enough not to affect the overall look and feel of a scene, particularly in a dark ride show element.