Shallow Water
From FleshWorks
by Nomad, with additions by Crispy
Adding Shallow Water to your level
There are two parts to shallow water. They are: static meshes, which form the visible surface of the water; and shallow water volumes, which make it behave like water. This tutorial covers both aspects.
- First, create your dry pool, canal or whatever in your map. Don't make it too deep or it will look very bad when Garrett crouches or picks up anything in the water. ("Too deep" means "Garrett's head could go under the water". Keep in mind that Garrett is 64 units high when crouching, so 64 units is too deep.)
- In the Static Mesh Browser under Nature, select one of the water textures. They all begin with "WAT". Right click over your pool and select 'ADD SM: WAT.... HERE'. Align it over your pool and slightly below ground level. (Note: If I use the Default skin for any of the meshes, I get the 'unpublished meshes' error when I try to save the level. I must select a skin for the mesh other than the Default. I'm not sure if this is a problem with my installation of the editor or the editor itself. However, the latter is more likely as the Default skin looks like the usual texture default. So it's probably a bad idea to use the Default water skins, although your mileage may vary.)
- Set your builder brush directly over your water surface, to a height high enough to cover Garrett's head when he's standing in the water. (Note: I never tried it lower than that so I'm not sure how well it would work.) (Also note: Don't worry about volumes intersecting with brushes; there is no consequence to having them intersect, they do so in OMs all the time. This means you can usually get away with only placing one volume for each body of water.) Once the builder brush is in position, click the Volume button (underneath the Add/Subtract brush buttons) and choose ShallowWaterVolume.
- BuildAll and you're set!
Tip: If you want to make your water 'flow', go to your static meshes properties and add the property 'Render: TexturePan'. Adjust the TexturePanX and TexturePanY to match your flow direction. I use .1 or .2 to simulate a slow flow.
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