Hi everyone,

I'm interested in using a plane object to simulate water surfaces by applying a displacement function (like a sine wave) to the surface. I was wondering how people usually go about this? I can create a plane in Direct3D well enough, but how would I go about deforming it (unless I made it using LOTS of vertices and displaced them individually). Is there a simple way?

Thanks!

Hey!

So if you're wanting to do traditional displacement mapping, you would need a fairly dense vertex count to get some good waves, at least from what I know. Though you can look into tessellation to generate more vertices for use, if your card can support it. I believe DX9 has some tessellation features, though it's been awhile since I've looked.

You can also get some decent looking waves with normal mapping, if you'd like. It doesn't require more vertices, and it can still look really good, though if looked at very closely, you'll see that the plane is still flat.

Good luck!