This took me a while to figure out how to do but I added a subtle ripple effect to the water when moving through it. #gamedev #unrealengine - ThreadSky

theeliasfrost.bsky.social • 5 days ago

This took me a while to figure out how to do but I added a subtle ripple effect to the water when moving through it.

#gamedev #unrealengine

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bibbleskit.com•5 days ago

Beautiful! It's crazy how much something so "simple" adds so much depth.

Think you can give a summary of how you achieved this? (idk anything about UE but I'm not unfamiliar with game dev)

theeliasfrost.bsky.social•5 days ago

Sure! The material is quite simple really but working out the maths was the hard part.

The ripple is a particle that spawns on the water surface.

On the material you have the refraction value, I wanted to control that in order to fade out the effect. A refraction value of 1 means no refraction.

theeliasfrost.bsky.social•5 days ago

I created a texture that is black and white. Where white = 1 and black = 0. I multiplied it by a value in order to raise the white values (to create a stronger effect). I then reverted the output and put that into a clamp.

It helps to think of the texture almost like a height map (sorta).

theeliasfrost.bsky.social•5 days ago

The clamp has a max value of 1 and the min value is controlled by the color scalar on a particle effect. Over time the texture trends towards a value of one (all white) and that's how I fade out the effect.

theeliasfrost.bsky.social•5 days ago

So what happens is that as the particle is increasing the color over time. Think of it like raising the floor until the texture is all white because the clamp is trending towards 1.

theeliasfrost.bsky.social•5 days ago

Then I did some coding for spawning the effects and aligning to the surface and such but that was pretty easy.

alexschlat.bsky.social•5 days ago

Splish splash splish

lemme play in it

sharkcheese.bsky.social•5 days ago

I've always appreciated this effect! I think the first time I saw displacement when walking through water was.. Alien vs Predator (2000)? Was there anything earlier?

theeliasfrost.bsky.social•5 days ago

Me too, I can't recall any game at the top of my head. The first time I remember being somewhat impressed by it was propably fallout 3 of all things. This is not even displacement though, it's just giving the impression of it using refraction on an animated sprite.

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