Halo 2 Water Shaders/water Revealed.....ALMOST

1111111OK after two days of pounding my head on my desk and waisting countless hours, I have some answers for us fellow mappers!!!.

if you guys recall a certain someone posted this.

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Originally Posted by jstatz

Okay, double-checked it. Looks like it goes something like this:

* Make a +media submaterial
* Create a flat plane where you want your water to be
* Apply +media to that plane
* Export and compile the level
* Open scenario_structure_bsp in h2guerrilla
* Down towards the bottom there's a "water definitions" heading. Add one if necessary, and point it to an appropriate shader -- I used tags\scenarios\shaders\multi\zanzibar\water_static .shader
* Close the scenario_structure_bsp and open the .scenario
* Look for "planar fog palette" about halfway down
* Add one if needed and point it to a planar_fog file. I used a custom one called tags\scenarios\multi\needle\needle_water.planar_fo g. (you can set fog depth by editing the planar_fog file)
* Save and you should be set.

From what I gather you can have multiple media layers (+media0, +media1, etc) but I only vaguely understand how they interact. I know that swamp map used a couple different ones, I think to have different fog types inside/outside the different areas.

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LOL well ONLY if it was that simple. He forgot to mention a crap load of other stuff. Its like giving someone directions to your house and you leaving out 9 roads in between :P. Not that i dont like figuring stuff out myself. i just hate waisting lots of time on crappy stuff.

ANYWAY, things i have found out about water:

Water will/can act as a stand alone shader that can actually be used as a shader on anything in your map, given you have the exact shader name as a name in your 3dsmax sub material.( example I actually created a water shader then opened my max scene and created a plain about 1 foot off the gound and applyed a material to the plane using the name of my water shader. I opened up sapien and walla water. Ofcourse i used a ! at the end of my materail name in max. ! is for render only. does not need to follow the sealed world laws. THE only down side to this method is the water DOES NOT act correctly. The correct way to add water is by creating a plane and adding a material called +media. Inwhich this case; you give the waters property value by editing the structure_bsp and Scene_bsp(for fog) which i explain below. So really only 1 +media plane will count as your fog and your water plane. OR you can choose to have it stand alone as just fog, or water depending on what water shader you use. I only got 3 water shaders to actually show up in sapien which is a big let down. And the water shader i got to look the best will not animate when i choose to use it on my +media plane. However it will work correctly as a normal shader when i apply it to a plane in max as a submaterail. I wonder if they did this purposly. The only shader that i can get to animate with the +media plain only renders in two colors(blue&white).(but does have depth from the bumpmap.
So what i have done for now is create a +media plane and ONLY apply a fog to it and create my water on geometry planes. It just sucks because it does not look as good nor does it hold true water characteristics.

PLEASE FEEL FREE to tinker around with what ive started with so maybe one of use will totally figure it out.11

OR BETTER YET PI STUDIO'S can shed some light :).......

Good Luck and i really hope we can figure this out.

http://www.madworkzstudio.com/halo/watertemp.jpg

Interesting. It doesn't seem to have the real time refraction that the Xbox has, however, but it's a start.

*waits for SOMEONE to try to make a tag extractor* =/

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Originally Posted by Lightning

Interesting. It doesn't seem to have the real time refraction that the Xbox has, however, but it's a start.

*waits for SOMEONE to try to make a tag extractor* =/

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NO, it does you just need to see it animating. If you look at H3's water in pics it looks like crap. The refraction/reflection maps really come to life when there moving

Ah, interesting, interesting.

Also, why are you never on AIM anymore D:

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Originally Posted by Lightning

Ah, interesting, interesting.

Also, why are you never on AIM anymore D:

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lol i am all the time. does it not show me ? im on right now. hmmmm. ive been wondering about this trillian program im using for my AIM app........deleting dling regular aim

trillian has an "invisible" feature, you're online, but no one can see you. maybe you have it on.

looks cool. i still have to get vista ><

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Originally Posted by Lightning

Interesting. It doesn't seem to have the real time refraction that the Xbox has, however, but it's a start.

*waits for SOMEONE to try to make a tag extractor* =/

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Why do you need a tag extractor? Doesn't the H2EK come with water shaders? What tags could you possibly need related to water?

Nick

I have a crappy layer on top that is moving and a crappy static layer underneath it D: I will tinker with it some more, but my results are nothing like yours.

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Originally Posted by Nick

Why do you need a tag extractor? Doesn't the H2EK come with water shaders? What tags could you possibly need related to water?

Nick

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No, it does not come with water shaders, despite the fact that it references them in the help file (sure wish it did, though).

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Originally Posted by Nick

Why do you need a tag extractor? Doesn't the H2EK come with water shaders? What tags could you possibly need related to water?

Nick

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Nope, no shaders.

Or scenery.

Or anything NOT in the "example" map.

^ lol tbh


Well, seems Mad is on the right track, just sucks that this ediitng kit is even more fucked up and less supported than the last. Though, I spose it will be fun for everyone to figure it all out. It'll be what seperates the shit maps from the "zomg s3x" maps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nick

Why do you need a tag extractor? Doesn't the H2EK come with water shaders? What tags could you possibly need related to water?

Nick

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Lightning is correct. Nothing is really included. Most of the tags referenced in the help file itself are not even there. Something is wrong. A tag extractor would help with most of the design.

There are so many things in Halo 2 used in multiplayer maps and singleplayer maps that were not included with the editing kit. Most of which are scenery and crates. Some of which are shaders.

I think the biggest mistake MS/Pi Studios made was removing all of our references. Of course they have the "templates," but you know. They look at it this way, "Well, Bungie started from scratch so why don't they start from scratch too?" At the same time, they didn't want us to figure out how to replace/make new game modes for MP/SP.

Ergh those bastards.

The Halo "Map Editor" isn't even supported by any of the companys all we have is some team members from Pi who come in here and tell us nifty things. Sometimes things that we already knew.

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Originally Posted by et_cg

I think the biggest mistake MS/Pi Studios made was removing all of our references. Of course they have the "templates," but you know. They look at it this way, "Well, Bungie started from scratch so why don't they start from scratch too?" At the same time, they didn't want us to figure out how to replace/make new game modes for MP/SP.

Ergh those bastards.

The Halo "Map Editor" isn't even supported by any of the companys all we have is some team members from Pi who come in here and tell us nifty things. Sometimes things that we already knew.

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LOL. ill believe i didnt read this. They TOOK out the tools allowing us to create the stuff that bungie created.
What do you think the programers created the engine and said the rest of the team had to figure out how to design with it without documentaion. HAHA. i doubt that. they just screwed us

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Originally Posted by madworkz

LOL. ill believe i didnt read this. They TOOK out the tools allowing us to create the stuff that bungie created.
What do you think the programers created the engine and said the rest of the team had to figure out how to design with it without documentaion. HAHA. i doubt that. they just screwed us

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No, they did not screw us. Considering even some of the documentation and help that jstatz posts (such as shader_collection, which should be shader_collections), is false information, I do believe something went wrong in the final release. They did not intend to screw us over.

A patch and upgrade for the editing kit would be VERY helpful. It has confused many users. Most can't create new shaders. There is hardly any scenery for maps. Things are just missing.

Like......everything?

yes, someone should make a tag extractor D:

Tag extractor? hmm...

^ do it do it do it :D

Someone should make an editing kit D:

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Originally Posted by Chewy Gumball

Someone should make an editing kit D:

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I'll get right on that.

Nick

You've been on that haven't you? =S

No, I've been playing Halo 3 because it is awesomes.

Nick

... Im not paying you to play Halo 3, get back to work on Prometheus...



ps... Im not paying you at all

Omg... On the first page... Someone said 'reflection'
EEEK
Halo, Halo 2, and in the beta, Halo 3 have NO REAL-TIME REFLECTIONS on their water. Wish they did, would love to see it, probably will happen in the final release of H3, but it has not yet happened in Halo 2 (or 3). Real-time refractions, due to their ease-of-use were introduced in Halo 2, and continued into Halo 3 (along with the addition of water physics) but thus far no Halo game has had reflecting water - only cube maps.
Tis unfortunate.
There are sooo many games that would have been better with RTR water... Not to mention any names *cough*GoW*cough*
Amazed about that last comment? It's true! The water in GoW is not RTR! Blew my mind when I found out.

And that, my friends, enemies, and acquaintances is my rant of the night!
May your plans for water be fulfilled!

Reflection = cubemap.. >>;;

refraction = dx specific shader that makes objects look cool.

Also: RTR: Halo 1.

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Originally Posted by jahrain

Tag extractor? hmm...

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Read up on how to make an HEK+ plugin. D:

I added water to my map. It didn't appear, so I compiled it again. And while I was doing the lighting...

http://i10.tinypic.com/4t8x1cz.jpg

So I assume it creates one automatically. An HDR reflection of the environment around the water to add to the water as a cubemap to reflect the environment realistically without using dynamic mirroring, that is.

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Originally Posted by SuperSunny

I added water to my map. It didn't appear, so I compiled it again. And while I was doing the lighting...

http://i10.tinypic.com/4t8x1cz.jpg

So I assume it creates one automatically. An HDR reflection of the environment around the water to add to the water as a cubemap to reflect the environment realistically without using dynamic mirroring, that is.

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I think it does that just for image based lighting when doing the photon mapping. If you can find the cubemap bitmap tags anywhere however, its possible you could try to use them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jahrain

I think it does that just for image based lighting when doing the photon mapping. If you can find the cubemap bitmap tags anywhere however, its possible you could try to use them.

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I haven't seen that appear once while doing my lighting, though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SuperSunny

I added water to my map. It didn't appear, so I compiled it again. And while I was doing the lighting...

http://i10.tinypic.com/4t8x1cz.jpg

So I assume it creates one automatically. An HDR reflection of the environment around the water to add to the water as a cubemap to reflect the environment realistically without using dynamic mirroring, that is.

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Hmm, I haven't seen that yet. I should mess around with it, maybe I will get that to show up.