Lava Material

tharle

I've created this lava material in UDK for a piece I'm working on and could do with some feedback as to how it's looking.

Here's a video of it in action

Currently it's setup with two scalar parameters: Crust Density and Speed.

Any idea's as to how I can improve it? or more controls that would be useful to have on the Material Instance?

chrisradsby

weird thing is probably that it's flashing at the same spot everytime, like there is a light-source underneath the Lava. If you get moving as well, maybe another direction it might look better. I have no idea how to do this myself so xD I'm not really sure if my suggestion is any good Looks good though.

glottis8

that looks like the top of a burned Kiesh o_O

System

It looks like slightly overcooked pizza bread, not lava. Have you studied any references for this?

For a good looking lava material you want glowing cracks amongst mostly rock basalt like this: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Photography/Images/Content/rope-lava-759786-sw.jpg

Create and animate 2 textures;
1. Lava lake with hotspots glow and falloff (bottom layer)
2. Moving basalt crust. (top layer)

*Only the crust needs to move.

Later on in development, the trick is to be able to animate an opacity mask over the crust which can reveal more or less lava. Not sure how to do that in kismet but if you ask around, someone should be able to point you in the right direction.

Edit: I attached a couple of Alphas taht I've had for a while now, they should help a bit

tharle

thanks for the comments GCMP,

the ref you posted is more of lava showing through solid rock imo. the ref i was using was this one around the 0:56-1:06 mark.

I'll have another go at the alpha on the crust though and see if i can make the glowing look more natural.

glottis8 - i presume you mean a quiche? any ideas on how to improve the look of the texture or should i just change my work from a cave to a kitchen?

System

No probs. It should all be possible with the two textures as mentioned, one lake of glowing lava underneath a solid crust controlled by an opacity mask.
If you looking to make a lava stream you could animate the lava motion while keeping the crust stationary and altering the mask so it reveals a strip of lava underneath.

Try checking out this thread for some more in depth info http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66952

tharle

i read through that thread but unless i'm missing something it's about static textures and vertex painting, rather than an animated texture. I can't see how you could setup a vertex painting shader that was moving since the vertices don't move? if you tried to paint the density the denser areas wouldnt move with the lava flow and you'd just get a weird swimming effect as the rock moved into fixed areas of high and low density.

System

Oh, my bad. I thought there was something in there about using animated masks. At least that's what I remembered about that thread when one of the artists was using the snow shader and animated it.
Someone should be able to help here if they have time, or you could try searching the epic forums for animated alpha tuts, they might even have a lava material example.