Cheap Fogging for large areas

[Jim_Partridge]

Hey

I'm trying to create a thick fog layer over the top of a gorge. See below for the look i'm going for:



the image above uses func_smokevolume. This is very expensive, especially over such wide area.
Does anyone know of a custom texture or another method for creating this effect thats much cheaper?

Thanks for any info you can provide...

[Slashgibber]

Maybe you could fake it with a scrolling texture on a brush/displacement? Kind of like how you can fake moving clouds.

[Botolf]

I agree, you can make multiple layers with varying scroll directions, such that it might look convincing for the very minimal cost. You could also perhaps consider parenting each layer to rotators at a slow speed or the like, to make it even harder to discern what the effect is.

Oh, and maybe dust puffs and dust motes that sit atop/within the layers to make the mix look less than homogenous (just use near or full alpha so that they're cheap, overdraw is a killer for stuff like this)?

[Dives]

I've never tested if this method works well or not, but you try creating a water material with every element removed but the fog. Put a fogstart of 0 and a fogend of 100 or so, and make the fogcolor a light gray. Only issue I see is that if a player touches it'll still behave like water.

[Jangalomph]

You could just use particle systems to create fog in layers. If you needed help with that, I could make you a system to fit your map.