I would like to make water like this: But I would also like to use the fixed function pipe line to do it. is it possible? and if not what is the best effect to use in the fixed function pipe line to render water?

As far as my limited experience goes, the short answer is no if you want to keep your frame-rates up. I tried to do the same thing not too long ago and what i got was something that 1)looked sub-standard and 2) took 3 seconds (or more) per frame... [smile] so...
My solution was to use an indexed vertex buffer (for performance) as the surface of the water and manually move the vertices's up and down myself. I also spent a long time making a very convincing texture for the water's surface. It turned out looking less like water than i had dreamed but its better than nothing. [smile]

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Stevo

Quote:Original post by EmptyVoid
But I would also like to use the fixed function pipe line to do it. is it possible? and if not what is the best effect to use in the fixed function pipe line to render water?

That would be a most definite no. The real question is why do you want to use the Fixed Function Pipeline at all? If it's due to farmiliarity with it, that's the wrong reason.

From the screenshot the water seems to be drawn using SM3, which requires quite a high-end graphics card, and would impose requirements that simply are not feasible with the FPP. This is exactly what shaders were designed for. Use them, they want you to.

From the screenshot, it looks like it's doing vertex displacement mapping. Which, as sirob said, requires a Geforce 6 or higher, or Radeon HD 2x00 or higher.

Is it possible using the fixed function pipeline? Sure. Lock the mesh, and modify the vertices yourself. It'll be very slow, though.

well I would like to use the fixed function pipe line because more graphics card are compatible with it. and since my game is an MMO. I think thats very important. The water effect I'm thinking of would use the stencil buffer and a bump map for displacement or just vertices moving up and down which I can do with indexed vertex blending so thats no problem but displacing the surface of the water is. how do I do that with the fixed function pipe line because I'm actually more new to it then using shaders. oh and Stevo14 it would be nice to see some screen shots if you can. [grin]