[EDIT : here is a video of the (temporary?) solution used, XViD codec.] Hello, i'm working on a water system, very HL2-like. in fact i use a 3 pass method 1- reflected scene (clipped) - clear frame and depth buffer 2- refracted scene (clipped) with volumetric fog 3- the water plane (using the refeflect and refract textures) & the upper world (clipped, again). The water is rendered using a normal map, and the vectors of this normal map are used to offset the texel reading in the to other maps. My problem is very common, but I didn't find information about how devs handle it. As you can see there are gasps at the edges. I think a lot about it and founded some solutions, some of them are not realistic in terms of perf. Others are introducing other errors. 1 - Calculate the Y value on a per fragment basis of the bump mapped water and clip per fragment the reflected scene (heavy cost) 2 - Offset the clipping plane by the maximum height of a wave in the water texture (in fact simulated height, as it is a plane), to try avoiding "to run out of reflect to show" (a few more reflect is drawn than necessary to fill the gasps. the second method works quite well to remove those artefact, but make some new ones a different stages. Indeed, the reflects are sometimes visible where it should not. To exaplain, i drawed a blue line where the cube intersect the water plane. No reflects of the cube should be seen above that line... this is unfortunately the case, and it is fairly logical... that is because i shifted the clipping plane of the reflected scene. Sorry for the legnth of the post. I would really apreciate help, or knowledge on how does devs handle this problem. Thanks in advance. [Edited by - jfdegbo on July 22, 2006 9:22:14 AM]

Well, I'm not sure of what I see in this screenshot, anyway, i didn't remember seeing a lot of artefact in the source engine on the "edges of the water".

But I noticed in their engine that the deformation is mostly X axis driven... Don't know exactly why.

No one ever did this water effect and got rid of those gasps ?

Thx

JFD

yes Hydrael,

that is what I did, but there comes the second screenshot...
It's strange not to have more feedback, I think every one who wants to do water reflections (without cube map) falls onto the same problems.

Hydrael : No problem, i'm pleased that you respond !
in fact, this would apear when you place your eyes near that plane ... very close to the surface... like when swimming with the head out of the water

mrbig : In fact no, there's no wrap, i think you misunderstood the problem. It comes from the fact that once cut, the geometry of the clipped reflections does have "holes" that is uncapped intersection with the clipping plane, i you see what I mean.

I know, and I don't exclude changing of technique in any of the stages... but I have no clue to do it in another way in real time. That's why I'm asking commets / suggestions.

Thanks for your response anyway mrbig.