I am developing an aquarium with interactive fishes. I would like to put some good looking effect there.
I have basically the fishes done and would like some environment effects. I plan to put some rocks and the ground with normal maps, some interactive grasses, …
In particular, I want to put in water shadow effect (any reference ?), water bubble effects (any reference, shall I implement with particles ?), fog like effects (for better depth view).
Any good references, advices, examples you can recommend ?
I assume you’ve already looked at vterrain.org/, which is always the first place to look for such things. Crytek’s presentations are always useful, too. The “Crysis Next Gen Effects” presentation from GDC 2008 is probably useful to you, it discusses some water effects.
Well i was gonna suggest a few things but looks like you’ve already done them all. 1: A wide FOV will help the effect (already done) 2: Use a particle effect for bubbles i think. and 3: You’ve already got caustics as well
VERY COOL!
As a potential consumer of this product may I ask:
Could you add some plants- I am really in aquariums (have three aquariums in my home) and I enjoy the plants as much as the fish- especially if the fish interact with the plants nibbling etc.
A real virtual aquarium with all the problems of real ones would be a great sim! Mysterious fish deaths, infestations, alien abductions, lethal nitrogen levels, Clown fish with pebbles sabotaging the filter.
Jelly fish are cool! Maybe a rock or submerged boat beam for mystery?
In my real aquarium I have several plants that do not move even in strong current- so wouldnt be any animation to speak of. But your app is nice just as it is.
My tank has snails, skunk loaches, ghost shrimp, red tail sharks, two types tetras, angel fish, glow fish, koolie loach, sucker fish, moss, sword grass, dwarf angel hair grass, mint charlie, duck weed, floating lichen ferns, drift wood and a root tangle. The ghost shrimp are wicked cuz they will hunt in packs and kill and eat slow or dumb fish.
I have two types of light, co2 device, bubbler, power filter, and heater.
When I get stressed I will just sit and watch the world in the glass and let the stress go… I could see you app being the same way. Helping to relax and destress.
BTW I saw your boat and water effects video very nice.
Never thought of taking a photo of my aquarium. All we use our camera for is filimg our Aikido classes here at the children’s home some of which are on youtube. Look for Kame-Do Aikido and you can see us and the kids I work with. ALthough I must be honest I hate the videos with me- cuz I look bizaare with hakama cuz I am Sumo size.)
I will take some pics of my aqaurium soon.
I aspire to make water art like yours one day- Years ago I made a rpg design doc called Bravery, it was a about a goldfish who becomes a dragon based in the japanese legend that Carp if they are brave enough can become dragons. Thus the Japanese Brave Boy day and the Carp flags everywhere.
But I lacked the art skills then to pull it off. Instead I made it a marble game like Zuma but played with dragons.
But maybe in the future I will try again as your app has reinspired me to think bigger.
It seems not the effect I want. I would like to have the ray cast out from the light source (like the first picture). How can I make it / adjust it accordingly ?
Well, that’s tricky and I render the scene twice to fix that. One renders only the stuff that casts the rays, and theres a commonfilter rendering for that buffer (invoke CommonFilters with that buffer instead of base.win).
The other renders the scene normally. The result from the filter is applied on top of the usual render.
I think I’m adding a trick to use the stencil buffer in 1.7.0 - that will be compatible with ancient GPU’s as well.
that looks nice.
