[QUESTION] Visual Artifacts - Cata Style Water in WotLK

[samgartell]

I'm trying to use the Basic Procedural Water row in LiquidType.dbc to replicate Cata styled water, but I'm getting strange artifacts such as this:


Not only is it creating the purple/white/pink colours, it's basically killing antialiasing around terrain, not sure if that's a normal thing, but the bright colours and the compressed look of the water isn't.

I assume the compressed look is being caused by the water texture being 256*256 so stretching is occurring.

In the attachment is the original PNG, the BLP and LiquidType.dbc. Presumably somebody who understands it more can tell me where it's going wrong, or more likely, where I'm going wrong.

EDIT: Another question, which column does it inherit the specular map from? Column 16 seems most likely, but column 16 refers to ProceduralDepth textures, and I'm not even sure where they're stored, they don't include a filepath, are they stored in-engine?

[schlumpf]

ProceduralDepth textures not being a file is the whole idea behind _procedural_ shaders. They are generated on the fly. That's also the problem when trying to use them in 3.3.5a since triggering generating these correctly is not trivial, to my knowledge. The visual artifacts may just be a bug in the shader itself.
I'm impressed you got that far.

[Steff]

Perahps stupid question. But the shaders are in MPQs. Is it possible to create own.

[schlumpf]

Perahps stupid question. But the shaders are in MPQs. Is it possible to create own.

In case the last part was meant to be the question: Yes, you can, if you are able to write a shader using the same attributes given for the original ones and understand the BLS format.

[samgartell]

ProceduralDepth textures not being a file is the whole idea behind _procedural_ shaders. They are generated on the fly. That's also the problem when trying to use them in 3.3.5a since triggering generating these correctly is not trivial, to my knowledge. The visual artifacts may just be a bug in the shader itself.
I'm impressed you got that far.

Ah, that's slightly disappointing, Thanks. And thank you?

Perhaps using the default ocean shader with a plain blue texture is the way to go for the closest effect. I'll make a few more attempts to improve on it, maybe look into WoW's shaders more. Would be nice to recreate the vertex animation and shoreline effect eventually. But right now it all seems like a headache waiting to happen.

[schlumpf]

Perhaps using the default ocean shader with a plain blue texture is the way to go for the closest effect.

Most people do that.

Would be nice to recreate the vertex animation and shoreline effect eventually.

Shoreline won't happen as you don't have the depth-of-water-information, if you don't have the procedual texture, I guess. Also, they added that later.

[Gurluas]

It tends to look more like glass. I wish there was a way to port the data we need from the Cata Alpha, they're still pretty similar.

[samgartell]

Perhaps using the default ocean shader with a plain blue texture is the way to go for the closest effect.

Most people do that.

I've just tried it, getting some strange artifacts on that too.


Going to try a blue caustic sequence with as little possible contrast, and see if it creates a nicer effect.

Is there any way to get the shader to render a bump/normal map sequence along with a diffuse?

It tends to look more like glass. I wish there was a way to port the data we need from the Cata Alpha, they're still pretty similar.

That's true, but it's a big improvement over the water we have now, with a normal map running over the diffuse, it'd look like cataclysm water even more-so.