Underwater maps in valve hammer, help needed

[✠ sleepnaught ✠]

I'm new to the whole modding scene and started working with Valve Hammer a few days ago. Right now, I've decided on making an underwater laboratory complete with glass windows where you can see out into the water. Think Bioshock or Sphere.

Now, When you just use the brush tool and texture it with water and such and stick it next to the window, you can't see the water. Its all invisible. So I think some trickery is involved.

I found this post on another forum, but due to my newbness, I don't quite comprehend what he's saying.

Would someone be able to help explain the process on doing this?

http://opal.lunarbreeze.com/~snark3/index.php?s=forums&f=6&t=11591&no=80&ss=snarkpit

Much appreciated in advance!

[Wazanator]

The trick is that you don't actually use water, you just make it look like water. Take a look at Siggys Zpo_aquatica map for Zombie Panic! Source his map is similar to your idea.

[✠ sleepnaught ✠]

Hi, I tried that but all the information just gets lost after decompiling it. There's no way for me to figure out what the pieces are for. It appears he's doing something with a skybox, but that's different than what the guy did in my first post. Where you can actually venture into the water instead of just an illusion.

[Team Fortress Two]

Func_Illusionary means you can go through the brush as a ghost. So you can go inside of the water.

The only purpose I see is so the "cheap" water looks beautiful, and "uncheap". Because if you didn't use dx70 water, his trick wouldn't (I guess) work.


As for the skybox, I have no idea when that guy mentioned "skybox".


I'm actually trying out my own tiny map just to see how this works. I'll update later.

[✠ sleepnaught ✠]

sorry, the skybox was in the map Zpo_aquatica that he suggested i looked at, not from the link I posted. If you find a way to get it to work, I'd greatly appreciate a copy of that map. :)

[Wazanator]

I'm not exactly sure how the guy in your original post did it, but to get the window effect do something like this: http://www.jailbreaksource.net/blog/?p=762

His water is still an illusion in the window part he just did it a different way. Here's what I would try http://i.imgur.com/Ov2hjqH.png

As for being able to go out in the water, you need to do a trick similar to what they did in bioshock 2. Have a pump room that fills up with water when a button is pressed, then open the door.

[✠ sleepnaught ✠]

thats pretty sweet, quite a bit of work, but looks like it'll be worth the effort. thanks! good idea on that pump room as well, gotta do that too.

[Wazanator]

He apparently crossposted it to interlopers, he goes into a little more detail there and explains how he came up with it, might help you: http://www.interlopers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=30805

[Wazanator]

Another thread on the subject: http://www.interlopers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=30752&p=375880

[✠ sleepnaught ✠]

seems its all about that refracting texture against the window, cant seem to make it right, it blurs everything ok but a part of the texture im doing is wrong and is checkered. argh

[Wazanator]

You might need to build cubemaps to fix that, saw someone mention that in one of the threads.

[✠ sleepnaught ✠]

got the blur going, now just gotta make the water "insides" itself visible from the window room. Will post pics of my crappy project in a few minutes

edit:

one problem I noticed with this texture is the light from prop_spotlight isnt visible at all when looking through

in the 2nd picture there should be 3 spots lights up top

http://steamcommunity.com/id/xslashx88/screenshots/