need help adding water to a level

torontoanimator

hi guys, Just had a quick favor to ask. I recently downloaded the newest version of udk, and i really need to learn how to add a water effect to it. I cant find any good video tutorials all the tuts ive found are text form, if anyone knows where i can find a good water building tutorial in video, please let me know, itd be very much appreciated!

passerby

just open the foliage map that comes with UDK for a good example of water so you could just look at the shader trees and figure it out.

or put some thought into what you want your water to look like and thinking out what it needs.

the obvious would be a translucent material with a cubemap combined in with the diffuse, and some panners your diffuse, normal and spec maps to give it some movement, and maybe a depthbased alpha to darken the water up where it is deep and to soften off edges where the water plane intersects other geo.


really like any advance shader just think of what elements you need, it should become obvious how to make it.


also when making udk mats this site will be your friend

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html

torontoanimator

umm, was kinda asking for a tutorial lol, im new to udk, i dont understand how to do what you just said

Vailias

If you didn't understand passerby's post, then a dedicated tutorial on water in UDK is going to go over your head also.

Check out some of the getting started tutorials for UDK on udn (http://udn.epicgames.com) There are also some getting started bits included with UDK.
Read up a lot on computer graphics, as nothing he mentioned (aside from panner) is UDK specific. Google the terms you didn't get, and once you understand what's going on you'll have better luck with the text tutorials, and or may not need them.

Ace-Angel

Almost all 'text' tutorials for UDK usually come with pictures, those should be really useful unless you're looking at a very strange tutorial, here what most of them are like:

http://www.hourences.com/ue3-water-outdoors/
http://www.hourences.com/ue3-water-indoors/

To put Vailias's words into practice, open one of the water materials located in UDK already and take a look at it. Some of them can be really simple, and some of them really complex.

If the materials look 'too complicated' for a lack of better terms, even the simple ones, then you really need to learn the material editor basics, there are many tutorials out there (free ones too, on YT), but you will still need to learn what each node does if you want to get the results you're looking.

I honestly recommend starting off on YT and any tutorials on it to grasp as much as you can alongside the Compendium, before moving on heavier stuff. If you simply don't care for materials, or don't want to learn, just use one of the current water materials for UDK.

Ouija

Ace beat me to it.
Hourences explains it pretty nicely. Doesn't cover realtime reflections though, if you ever have questions about that then I'll gladly explain.