Hello I wanted to ask if is possible with the plugin dreamscape to bake a looped tiling texture of sea animation to create a set of sequenced images to use for a looping animation that is tiling and looping ....if so any idea where I can check to see tutorials etc?
Replies
http://ericchadwick.com/examples/movies/dreamscape_waterbump.mov
http://ericchadwick.com/examples/movies/waterbump_128x128_60frames.MOV
All I had to do was position an ortho camera at just the right distance. Had to tweak the position a lot, until the tile was perfectly captured.
Biggest problem is it has to be repeated like crazy to make a whole ocean surface, which causes the repetition artifacts to become really obvious. I solved this by blending it with itself, with the 2nd map rotated at a different angle (and different start frame),. I used a noise-pattern blend mask.
It's been a loooong time since I used Dreamscape. I only recall carefully adjusting my rendered frame range to match the wave frequency. It does loop perfectly. Most video players do not play looping videos perfectly, they add a pause. Quicktime is the best at this I think.
For the height map render, I applied a sideways UV and used a black-white gradient map. To do a normal map, there are several ways to map it.
http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#Baking_Transparency
Better not to use a looping animated texture for water. It wastes a lot of memory, and it repeats too much. I solved the repetition problem by using a carefully-adjusted blend mask, some screenshots here
http://ericchadwick.com/img/gmts_landscape.html
One popular method for water is to use a shader that blends two copies of the same single normal map, each scrolling in different directions. When it's done right it creates a "moire" kind of effect, which makes it look like more motion than it really is. For example...
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UT3_Water_Reflection_Tutorial.html
Also the step is in the 3dsmax not really in the player as I didnt render out it yet .....
also are there other better tools or plugins for doing that ?
for example if I make a waterfall of lava and I want to bake the animation of it so that looks pulsing and slowly slimey flowing along a mesh , apart that I can make it scroll along it in the game engine but I cant animate the pusling or other animation effect , same if it was water or any other fluid , so my idea was to create trick illusions in the engine to play animation effects that would require hoard of resources to be done in real time ....
Max can usually preview a loop without a pause. Maybe you need to make the time segment shorter or longer.
The best tool for this is to use a shader that brightens/darkens/fades textures, like in the last link I sent.
Particle emitters also help with making animated FX (waterfalls, sparks, etc).
Animated textures are generally bad, unless they are very small and packed in a sprite sheet. A sprite sheet helps to increase the framerate, because the game doesn't have to keep loading and unloading individual texture files, instead it can load just one texture and re-use it.
What a sprite sheet looks like:
But still, it is generally better to use a shader that blends single textures together... because then you are not limited to one loop at one speed and one pattern... the blending and scrolling and moire create many more variations.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdWrWfL5E4c[/ame]
But for my animated map, I didn't use RTT, I rendered straight from the camera. Either way works.
Set the render size to 128x128 (or whatever size you want the tile to be). Turn on the Safe Frame preview in the viewport. This shows you the render border.
Adjust the camera FOV and position. This is the most difficult part... you need to find where the edges of the water tile, and adjust your camera edges to match. This will require very careful tweaking, probably by adjusting to the 100th decimal place. It is not easy... but I have proof it can be done!
For caustics, look at this tool:
http://www.dualheights.se/caustics/
Tough when I animate those holes come out , how cna I avoid this?