Water Light Reflections in Unreal Engine
polycounter lvl 5
Hey there. I'm working on some visual effects for a level I am working on but I've hit a bump with an effect that I can't really find any info on.
I want to create an animated water light reflection that looks something as nice as or close to this :
And what I have is this:
Is there a method or a better way to make this look good? Right now I have a material setup on a panner/rotator and hooked into a spotlight as a light function. But it looks... crumby, even raising the texcoords to make the texture a bit smaller.
I want to create an animated water light reflection that looks something as nice as or close to this :
And what I have is this:
Is there a method or a better way to make this look good? Right now I have a material setup on a panner/rotator and hooked into a spotlight as a light function. But it looks... crumby, even raising the texcoords to make the texture a bit smaller.
Replies
I know there's applications which can automatically generate an animated and tiling caustic pattern for you.. though, iirc they also cost a bit, which, feels a bit wasteful.
And, I think the reason it looks crumbly is that you got some more random crackly pattern rather than the more cellular formations you'd normally see.
Actually, found some here:
Free for non-commercial. Think you can export as a flipbook squence?
http://www.dualheights.se/caustics/
Not sure what lisence there are under:
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/reality/Research/PeriodicCaustics/
/edit: Oh, for the last one:
" If you are going to use these texture maps, please make sure to acknowledge me and/or my company." Can't find any mail adress or anything, but his name, Jos Stam.
Hope that helps
The improvement with the right kind of texture. (Slightly shaky because I took this with my phone.)