do you guys know a water tutorial around the web that really helps to understand how this effect is done? the tutorials on this page are more than just outdatet... they don't explain much and are hard to understand. perhaps someone can explain to me how it is done. i know that primarily they use a bump map to simulate the water height. the "new" heigh is then influenced by the surrounding old height, but also by the new height, wich makes totaly nonsense, since the new height isn't defined yet. this is just like: int i = i - 1; somewhere in the articles, it is said that i need two maps, wich then will be swapped contineusely. since i hardly understand pascal, i can't figure out what they are exactly doing. i would be really thankfull for any advice you can give me :)

FX Composer includes a nice Ocean.fx sample. Keep in mind it is very complex, and uses several different techniques, so you really would be better off starting with each of the basic elements used (bump mapping, reflections, etc).

MDX Info has a simpler water shader, IIRC.

Hope this helps.

everyone uses a different approach, this is really great -.-

my visual effects book uses a different one than the tutorials here and than the tutorials i found on the web ( although most are useless, except the one from your link ).

but what the heck are binormals, and why does your tutorial need the vertex normals, binormals and tangents?? its a flat plane, aligned to the x und z axis, you don't need any information about the vertex alignment for normalmapping.

perhaps you can explain me why it's done anyway?

well, i managed to do the water surface with bumpmapping, but i am confused about how the environment is mapped into a texture.

i know that i need to change the render target to the environmentmap. but i also need other view and projection matrices, do i? since the texture contains 6 "pictures". does anyone know a good tutorial ( or perhaps explain it here in the thread ) about how this is done with direct x?