Water problem

[nomadicus]

I've been helping a friend at zerofrag.com solve a problem. He has ported Dria to UT3 and done an amazing job. But he has a problem I thought I could solve. So far, everything I have done has not fixed the problem and I have tried numerous solutions.

The problem is at certain angles the water looks fine and at certain angles, the water does not.

The water has two materials on two static meshes (one a little higher then the other):
The top static mesh has the material UN_Liquid2.BSP.Materials.M_UN_Liquid_BSP_Distortio nRiver_Optimized. The river is made up of many of these joined seemlessly together to create a large flowing river.
The bottom static mesh has the material UN_Liquid.BSP.Materials.M_UN_Liquid_BSP_Distortion Creek_01_RockTops and is used only to surround the pillars in the pictures (below).
The static mesh used is EditorMeshes.TexPropPlane

Good:


Bad - Line created:

In the above, the line is exactly where two static meshes join to create flowing water over a larger area than a single static could (and still have the desired speed).

Underneath these two static meshes is a static mesh to make the pillar look good. At yet another angle, this underneath static mesh seems to have disappeared:


If I remove the bottom static meshes the water around the pillars look fake but it solves the problem. Resizing and moving them around, etc. does no good either.

This is acting like an occlusion problem, but at this distance and the small change in viewing angle, it can't be.

Can anyone think of a solution?

[Nawrot]

You need to make custom material that blends those 2 materials exactly near pilars. To do this you need custom alpha texture that is painted around pillars and blends those 2 materials in a way you need.

Those seams are due to rendering optimalisation, at some angles engine skips or inverts order of rendering.

So make one big sheet (or maybe custom static mesh) that covers whole river, then paint alpha texture for it. Recreate both water materials as one material and blend them useing that alpha texture.

[Pete_Ellis]

Also, as you mentioned with the desired speed, if it works, try making one big sheet and say if it was double the size, double the speed of the material in the editor. Sorry if that seems obvious? If your using the material else where or if its one from UT3 duplicate in your own package and mess around with it. Hope that helps and its not blindly obvious!

[nomadicus]

It is a little more complicated then that. M_UN_Liquid_BSP_Distortion Creek_01_RockTops is around each pillar underneath the water mesh -- one for each pillar. The river water is large enough to create one single one. So unless I customize a single material to expand and locate the material for each pillar on the water layer . . . yuck. Not going to be easy if it is possible at all.

[Zoo]

You can make a material automatically fade out when it hits another piece of geometry.

http://help.hourences.com/tutorialsue3mated2.htm

[chri882]

it was always making to me in uted2.0..never got the solution...