Anyone have a fix for this water problem?


As you can see in the pic, the transition from "real world" water to skybox water is pretty obvious (that faded line). It's due to the water_lod_control turning the real-world water into cheap water, which i'm guessing is just the color of the sky above it, hence the grey. Unfortunately, the water_lod_control does not do this to the skybox water, so the two waters dont blend. Any suggestions how to work around this?

Looks more to me like your start/stop fog settings dont match up correctly.

Originally posted by DjBourgeoisie
Looks more to me like your start/stop fog settings dont match up correctly.

Nope, that's not it. I thought it might be that at first, but the fog blends perfectly. The fog matches in all other areas. Not to mention i can disable fog and that line will still be there. It only appears with the water_lod_control. E.g. If I decrease the cheap water start distance, that grey line will move closer to the player's POV.

Originally posted by Dustin Diamond
Nope, that's not it. I thought it might be that at first, but the fog blends perfectly. The fog matches in all other areas. Not to mention i can disable fog and that line will still be there. It only appears with the water_lod_control. E.g. If I decrease the cheap water start distance, that grey line will move closer to the player's POV.

Are you sure? If you look at the seam in the actual map you see fogging start and just stop, then its clear in the skybox and it then becomes gradually saturated. To test my theory disable fog in ur skybox and map and if the seam is gone your fog blend is off. Make sure you are using the same water texture in both and the scale in the skybox is scaled down to compensate.

here's a testmap i made to try out some ideas. there is NO FOG in this map. water_lod_control is set to start cheap water at 500 and end at 1000.


i have tried adding a water_lod_control to the skybox, but it doesnt do anything. The only solution seems to be to set the start and end distances to something really far away, which is more expensive performance-wise. Unless someone else has any ideas...

just a shot into the blue, but maybe add cubemaps and run buildcubemaps in console?

you should just use a cheap water texture for the skybox texture (presumably the cheap version of your real world water texture) and the seem would probably just go away by itself. I know that's what Dogsector uses

I just tried the cubemaps, nada.

I am currently using water_anzio002_cheap for both real world and skybox textures.

I checked out how anzio was done and the same problem exists (http://img417.imageshack.us/img417/9417/dodanzio0000uy6.jpg), except they made the real world brush so large that you cant really see the edges. Plus they used the other anzio water texture (which is more blue) in combination with a blue sky, so the effect isnt as noticable. Plus you never run up much of an incline for your line of sight to be any good.

I'm gonna fool around with making a custom water vmt to see if i cant make the skybox water grey all the time, since the player will never be close enough to it that it should be rendered normally. Other options are to make the sky darker so that the reflected color better matches the water color.

another shot ... did you make sure the lighting in the skybox is exactly at the same location as your light in the level? i moved mine around and forgot about the skybox light. but actually i don't know if it makes any difference.
in fact, i couldn't get it to match myself, so i made a workaround......it's not that great, but it works ;)

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/8093/dodplateauv42sr9.jpg

ah yes i see you have the same problem. Good thinking with the lighting, but I duplicated the orginal which uses angles, so no luck there. Nice workaround. Maybe i could have a giant coral reef surrounding the beach :)

Well i've had moderate success in making my own water vmt. Basically i took the water_anzio002_cheap.vmt file and made a new one for use in the skybox. To do taht, I just changed the line:
"$fogcolor" "{40 38 33}" <== the original brownish color.
to match my fog/sky color (144 147 147). This made the water appear grey all the time.

Here's the results. These pictures are taken from the exact same spot. The one on the left uses water_anzio002_cheap for all water textures. The one on the right uses the anzio texture for the real world water, but the skybox water is using my custom vmt. The only caveat here is the user must not be allowed to come within range of the skybox water, or else they'll see that the water is grey. That range is defined by your water_lod_control.

damn thats nice. Ive noticed that too but never really thought about it (fixing it i mean). Nice workaround for that. ill have to try that

nice workaround!
much better than mine!

Originally posted by pluckster
damn thats nice. Ive noticed that too but never really thought about it (fixing it i mean). Nice workaround for that. ill have to try that

Looks good *thumbs up*.