Improving lpc water.

Improving lpc water.

Blogposts

Listing the blogposts with stuff I've learned here:

Original post

So, I've been poking at LPC graphics again, and I noticed that while the lpc water isn't horrible, it also doesn't give me the feeling my character is going to get wet when they touch the water.

Obviously, everyone can add to the collection, but when I tried to pixel my own water I noticed I sucked. And then I tried to find if someone else had done similar stuff, and while there were people who animated the LPC water, I think it can be better?

And, I think that there's been so little animated water is because few people really have an idea of how to animate water, so I figured it might be an idea to just make a thread and throw out my experiments, and people can give feedback, or join in, and if nothing else we'll be wiser at the end of the day.

So, first things first, I went looking for LPC stuff:

Then I went looking for any other kind of animated water:

And of course, attempted to find tutorials. Found one for waterfalls, and this one for animated streams, which I remember reading like a long time ago.

I also looked at how the rpg maker 2k/3 tiles worked.

So, my experiments start with lpc_nile.gif, because my frustration started when I was doing Ancient Egyptian architecture, but the water didn't look much like the nile. This one is an expanding/contracting one that goes 0-1-0-2, but it looks blobby.

A bit of research later, I decided to try my hand on a mountain stream, with pebbles and stuff, in particular stream_v1_anim.gif. Again a expanding/contracting one that goes 0-1-0-2, which is the most common format it seems for water that stands still. Stream_v2_anim.gif is one with the borders fitted to the underlying pebble texture. (This isn't my working file, I am actually using the rpgmaker mv autotile layout and then a script to convert that to caeles' wang tile layout, hence the lack of alt tiles right now.

Stream_v3_anim.gif is when I tried to add directional animation, this is 4 frames long, going 0-1-2-3. It didn't quite work because the animation doesn't smoothly transition to the next frame at one point. It looks more fit for water sliding off stalegtites or ice.

At version 4, I decided to make the flow animation a bit bigger and make it transition more fluently, so that the flow would continue from frame 3 to the next section on frame 0. Inverting the animation (3-2-1-0) makes it go in the opposite direction, and I used layer so I only had to rotate the flow part of my animation to get the horizontal flow from the vertical.

Then I went back to version 2, and added in an outline, leading to stream_v2_outlines.gif. I also recalled this blog about how things being wet makes the contrast on them higher, (because there's less diffusion going one, and more sharp reflections). So what I did was that I duplicated the water layer, set both layers to 50% opacity, the lower to multiply, and the upper to overlay. Which ended me with stream_v2_outlines_blended.gif

I liked that so much that I tried it with the streaming one too, stream_v4_down_blended.gif.

So, what do you think? What else should I try?

Attachments: 
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lpc_nile.gif lpc_nile.gif 14.9 Kb [13 download(s)]
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stream_v1_anim.gif stream_v1_anim.gif 52.9 Kb [11 download(s)]
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stream_v2_anim.gif stream_v2_anim.gif 53.6 Kb [8 download(s)]
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stream_v3_anim.gif stream_v3_anim.gif 3.6 Kb [12 download(s)]
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stream_v4_down.gif stream_v4_down.gif 75.2 Kb [10 download(s)]
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stream_v4_left.gif stream_v4_left.gif 71.9 Kb [7 download(s)]
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stream_v4_right.gif stream_v4_right.gif 72 Kb [9 download(s)]
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stream_v4_up.gif stream_v4_up.gif 75.2 Kb [9 download(s)]
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stream_v2_outlines.gif stream_v2_outlines.gif 68.4 Kb [8 download(s)]
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stream_v2_outlines_blended.gif stream_v2_outlines_blended.gif 68.4 Kb [7 download(s)]
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stream_v4_down_blended.gif stream_v4_down_blended.gif 75.2 Kb [13 download(s)]