Beach Scene for my game?

fullgrown31 · August 28, 2011, 5:50pm

Hi, as you all know from the title, I’m going to have a Beach scene in my game. My nooby question is. How would I approach this? Is there animated textures for beaches? I mean, I know the water textures being animated. Tiling, etc. I know that, But how would I make awesome textures that when the water touches the sand, it will wave. Maybe something like this?

I also want the white thingy where the water touches the sand, etc. Any good?

ethan_n · August 28, 2011, 6:00pm

This is extremely hard. The first studio to accomplish this was Crytek. You could probably cheat and make an animated texture. Then you would apply it to a plane and extrude it (the plane) along the beach

gat19g · August 28, 2011, 6:18pm

That seems like the best bet. However, I would use multiple planes to give variety and also to couture to the beach because I assume it wont be totally straight. As for the beach you need to keep the beach itself low poly and the water low poly so you can add a litle more detail where needed (plants, trees, and objects). Don’t feel like you need to add so much detail and don’t forget that sometimes the best way to get realistic results is to fake it. Hope this helps, and good luck on the project!

mziskandar · August 28, 2011, 7:06pm

This texture are hand drawn single image (with GIMP).
Texture layer and reflection layer.
…maybe you can use animated image for the water teeth (the bubbles).

C.A.ligari · August 28, 2011, 10:20pm

Apply a Script for UV-Scroll to an object that has two UVs. The first UV may be an Alpha Map, the second one would be the Wave plus »white Thingy« :3 and the UV-Scroll shall not just scroll along, but apply a Sine Wave to it, so that the UV would whip back and forth. Depending on how you shape Texture and UVs you also could make the Uv of the Alpha-Mask whip back and forth – maybe that would help make the Water Teeth come and go.

But yeah, maybe an animated Texture would be best, I just like UV-Scrolling.^^

fullgrown31 · August 29, 2011, 3:44am

Thanks but i really don’t how to achieve this using animated textures, anyone knows a tutorial on using animated textures like a pro? Or anyone kind enough to give me an example blend? That would totally help, really.

mziskandar · August 29, 2011, 4:42am

Here’s the file above. It’s not optimized (textures & poly). cheatBeach.blend (1.77 MB)

fullgrown31 · August 29, 2011, 5:24am

WELL, okay. How do I animate it though? Sorry for nooberish. Anyone knows how to animate it?

mziskandar · August 29, 2011, 5:29am

For setting up animated texture, you may try this. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Game_Engine/YoFrankie/Real_Time_Water

And here’s the basic idea on how to make the water teeth texture. waterTeeth.blend (648 KB)

Render each frame.
Stitch to tiles in GIMP (I’m using sprite-sheet plugins)
Map to desired faces.

Cheers!

fullgrown31 · August 30, 2011, 3:25am

I meant how to make an animated texture on the water bubbles, i know how to make the water animated texture.

C.A.ligari · August 30, 2011, 6:52am

Watch a Shore and think of the separate Elements its »natural Animation« consists of.

Wave crashing into the Shore and falling back again.
As the Wave falls back, the white Foam will follow that Movement only damped exponentially.
As a Rest of the Water what has been touched by the Wave remains not just darkened but also reflecting (with tiny Bubbles from the Foam gliding towards the Water).

So, what do you need?

A Wave with Foam at its Front Border. As the Wave falls back, a new one will come – so let’s say, you might need two Planes. As the first Plane falls back, the second one will move towards the Shore, hovering above the first one, and while the Second Plane collides with the Shore, the First Plane starts moving up, so that it will, as well, hover over the Second Plane as that one will fall back. In the End you get a not so vicious Circle of two Planes flying in Circles.^^
Then, there is the Foam that remains at the Shore. Translated into simple Videogame Optics it might simply one Plane with the »Restfoam Texture« that stays where it is, but as the Wave falls back, the two Vertices at the Wave End, you could say, get streched to match with the Wave. So, the outer Border of the Restfoam will stay where it is (which should be where the Wave touched the shore at its Maximum Line) while the Foam’s Rest is following the Wave normalizedly-exponentially undamped.
Since we already have (concerning Point 2) a Plane covering the whole Area where the Water has touched the Ground, we simply can make that (of Course transparent!) Plane darkening the Sight to the Ground beneath it as well as reflecting (with a simple Reflecting Map – we don’t wanna get hyperrealistic here…).