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[Kaz]

Hi all,

We have ponds and streams in our game and we're using particle emitters to animate them. The effect is good, but not perfect (although we realise that could be down to the accuracy of the sprite we're using). Anybody got any ideas for ways to effectively animate water?

For example - the particle emitter imposes an effect on top of the water in a 2D picture - could we perhaps move the pixels in the scene directly, the way it's done in Adventure Maker for instance?

Thanks,

Kaz

[odnorf]

I can think of two ways of having water effects appart from particles. The first is using a theora video and the second is to use a wme plugin in combination with sprites to have a semi-random water distortion.

[metamorphium]

I've written displacement plugin for this some time ago, but I've lost it together with sources somewhere.

[Jyujinkai]

i'd be interested to see this partical method in action. We have been using theora video loops for things like wind blowing plants , waving curtains, flags, water movment, etc etc etc

[metamorphium]

if anyone downloaded the dll file back then, please put it somewhere and I'll host it on other site.

[Mnemonic]

The DLL is part of Nihil's Beyond the Threshold game.
And I don't think you ever released sources.

[TommyWright]

I would seperate your water element into a pass and take it into a compositing program like Digital Fusion or After Effects.  There you can blend the first and last frames to have a smoother loop.  Dynamics and Particles are difficult to loop because they generate on a seed and unless your software knows to end the animation exactly where it began, it will pop.

[SBOVIS]

Hi,
     Try creating the effect outside of WME by using this nice utility.

http://www.xiberpix.net/SqirlzReflect.html

Then save as individual frames and create entity sprites for your scene or convert the AVI to THEORA. Simple but effective! 

[Kaz]

Thanks for all the replies.

We've downloaded the SqirlzReflect utility and it's really useful. Bit worried at first that it would spoil the reflections that we'd already placed in the water scenes but if you set the transparency option to 100% it just moves the pixels around on the reflections you have created rather than superimposing its own. The individual frames can then be saved as jpgs or pngs and a sprite made as was suggested. So it looks like we have a solution.

All ideas much appreciated.

Kaz