An Awesome Thing - Water Reflections

[thebeanie]

So I was just messing around with a random map idea today, when suddenly this happened:



It was an artistic thingy. Basically the idea was to have the 'living' tree on the top of the water, then with the 'dead' tree (there's a dead tree prop upside-down under the water there) visible through the water. But I accidentally used a different water texture (this is water_riverbed02_beneath). As a result, the 'dead' tree is not visible through the water's surface, but has actually replaced the above tree's reflection.

In other words, I've managed to make the water reflect something other than what is actually there. Neat, huh?

Has anyone else managed to create this effect? It looks like it could have some interesting uses, if only as an artistic gimmick.

[joe_rogers_11155]

it is pretty neat. can you get a picture from under the water? then you can rotate it upside down to make it look like the camera took the picture while upside down. might look even more awesome.

Another idea would be to try it out in the Portal 2 engine, where the water reflections are even stronger. Hell, you could build a whole chamber that is clean and pristine on the top, and then a completely cloned upside down chamber that is grungy and disgusting under the water. would lead to some very interesting screenshots.

[thebeanie]

No, it doesn't work from under the water, just from above.

In the Portal 2 engine? Now there's an idea. I'll do a few more experiments to see what else I can pull off with the 'false reflections' trick first.

[thebeanie]

And hey, here's another awesome thing:


As far as I can see, the effect probably works on pretty much everything that's rendered. I have not tried particle effects, sprites or things which use complex shaders (the rotating blocks from the engine stress test). It definitely does work on all kinds of props and brushes.

[dark0r]

And hey, here's another awesome thing:


As far as I can see, the effect probably works on pretty much everything that's rendered. I have not tried particle effects, sprites or things which use complex shaders (the rotating blocks from the engine stress test). It definitely does work on all kinds of props and brushes.

Water reflections will work on everything that is rendered if you've got expensive water enabled (i.e. the Reflect All in your Advanced Video options, otherwise entities aren't reflected). The way reflections work is that the entire scene is rendered upside down with a clip plane and then drawn on the water surface. So yes, everything is rendered!

[Ark11]

Looks great. Only problem is that you can't really tell that the reflection is a dead tree, so try and use a different water texture or change the textures scale. (default is 0.25).

[joe_rogers_11155]

or take a screenshot where the water level is right in the middle of the image, so we can see both trees without reflection. and place some lights underneath, shining up onto the upside-down dead tree...and just built the scenery around it so it looks really cool instead of looking like a test box with water in it. its a bad ass concept.