.Map :: MoHAA Mapping

several times i read that water textures must be applied to the top and the bottom face of a brush. (6 sided cube would have 2 sides with water texture and 4 with nodraw). Some even say, the bottom face must be below the sea/river ground.

Why? I tried 3 brushes with
1st: top face water, 5 faces nodraw, bottom face touching ground
2nd:top and bottom face water, 4 faces nodraw, bottom face touching ground
3rd: top and bottom face water, 4 faces nodraw, bottom face below ground
they all look the same to me. where's the advantage of that water texture on the bottom face?

Try jumping into the water

btw now that I think of it it may be more efficient to use a different texture for the bottom. Since it's only used to define the volume as a water volume, there is no need to render generally complex shader effects on this plane. So I think just a blank texture with a surfaceparm water will do.

and i try and try... should i find anything? i found out with a nonwater texture (without surfaceparm water) applied to the bottom face, i can walk on water (ooo, look, i'm je... sorry ) and i wonder whether i had, during my tests, once no water sounds, but i can't reproduce this anymore...
anyway, here's my map and all three pools are the same for me.

I tend to use waterskip on the 5 nonvisible surfaces, and that also works as far as I can tell.

If you don't put the bottom face below the terain you will get an air pocket under the water that you can see if you are in the water . If you don't put nodraw on a side face and you put another water brush beside the first one the join line will show like a wall of water in the water . That maybe ok if you want to part the red sea but doesn't look good .

If you go under water, your view is distorted because you are in a water volume, as jv-map said. If you only texture one face, that property wont work. And, if the bottom of the water brush is not below the river/ocean/pond bed, granades resting on the botom may not explode with the water effect.

thanks, this makes things clear!

I have done a fair amount of tests with variuos water textures and their uses and found that the original MOHAA ones vary in how you use them.

First thing to realise is that not all the textures you see in Radiant are meant to be used on their own. Most water textures in game are actually 'bundles' of combined water textures.
So if you use one part of the texture such as the surface for the whole volume you may find the surfaceparams in the shader on some do not actually include "non-solid" and to use this texture alone you will need to check this param in the textures popup in Radiant.

Some of the textures used in game were also never meant to be non-solid as the player was never allowed to enter such as some of the U-boat pens.
Hence the surface only needed to be drawn and was non-transparent and solid.

Most of the actual Ocean textures used in game are unhelpfully in some ways represented by the nondescriptive editor texture.
No one at EA has yet in any release helped mappers by supplying an explanation of the the use the shaders and textures were designed for,
ie the optimum size and fx direction, how to combine the shoreline and deep oceans together.
Users individually have experimented to find their own answers but no one has yet supplied a comprehensively tutorial.
It seems no one single explanation that covers all the original water textures as they each have different properties and ways of use.

The River and pond textures are easier as they are either single textures or simplier bundles and the end result is easier to achieve.

Personally I tend to start with nodraw on all 5 sides but the surface, river bottom textures are just like normal ground ones and I tend to apply these to a separate calked brush lining the bottom of the river if based on brushes and not LOD or mesh.

This seems to work well with most as you dont need any params for sides
usually.
I seem to remember that one or two textures need sides to be textured or no-draw and certainly not calked as that seems to have an impact on some shaders affecting visibly transparency fx in various ways.

Hey Oddball, haven't see you at .map for a while Glad to hear from you again