PW/game water transitions

[ldvger]

For those of us into "naturalistic" cities/regions, the transition from plop water to game water remains one of the greatest challenges yet facing us.  Magnificent progress has been made in creating excellent and beautiful plop waters, along with a myriad of attendent props that make PW look natural, and equally wonderful work has been done on water mods that make the game water look so much better than the Maxis "plain vanilla" version.  However, getting the PW and the game water to flow seamlessly together has yet to be accomplished.

There are a number of work arounds I've seen.  Waterfalls are often used to make the transition, but in RL it's rare that a waterfall drops off a cliff and into the sea.  I've seen folks use bridges as a transition, hiding the meeting of the PW to the GW under the bridge.  Some folks construct dams at the mouths of rivers, which again masks the transition but how many dams are actually built across the mouths of rivers?  For smaller streams and creeks, culverts going under a seaside road fit the bill nicely.

But for rivers of any decent size, say 4 tiles across or larger, it seems the only way it works is to use game water.  In some ways this is an acceptable compromise, as large rivers enter the sea at sea level and usually are barely above sea level for many miles up river of the sea.  But what about the streams and creeks and smaller rivers that always, always feed into the larger river? 

It's a conundrum, no doubt about it.  I've been experimenting and have not found anything I am happy with so far.  So I am hoping that maybe if a bunch of us talk about it and experiment together, we just might come up with something that actually works.

This is as far as I myself have gotten so far:

One of the problems with PW/GW transitions is water color and transparency.  Most PW is opaque while GW has an increasing level of transparency as it approaches the shoreline, which makes it almost clear/white at shallow beaches.  I have gotten around this by creating underwater channels in GW that run inland.  This happens in RL even with small bodies of running water...I'm sure we've all seen stunning aerial and/or satellite photos of extremely braided river delta systems.  I've found that using the Edmonton v2 with dogfight's Marshy Green Water mod creates a GW color, in deep water, that is a nearly flawless match to PW created by first laying down and Edmonton PW tile and then overlaying it with jeronij's blue TPW.  A deep water channel created by raising terrian in God Mode, then using the Quick Level tool at smallest size to drag a small channel from a deep water location to someplace upstream of the shore line, then using the Major Mode Quick Level tool for an even smaller brush size, then carefully smoothing the banks of the channel those created works fairly well, once one lowers terrain back to normal, again in God Mode.  This creates a naturalistic looking channel running out to sea and, if one is very careful, creates a decent transition spot, so long as your transition area is not across diagonal cells. 

The problems with this method are several.  Edmonton PW will not plop under GW.  jeronij's TPW will, but regardless of how carefully I prepare the transition area, there is a graphic gap between PW and GW.  If there was an opaque PW the same color as the Edmonton that COULD plop under water, this problem could be solved.  I know zero about modifying game instruments, so for now I'm stuck using what others create.  A second problem is that while the GW modifiers I use and listed above create a nearly perfect color match, I don't really like the way it makes my GW look.  The problem seems to be dogfight's mod, which is very flat, no water texture to it, and it has "jaggies" and appears pixilated as it changes hues moving from deep water to shallower water.  I much prefer PEG's "Brigantine" mod with the Edmonton v2, but I have not been able to find a PW, either stand alone or in combination with another, that makes a color match to that GW combo.  PEG's "Tahoe" plop water comes close (and it has nice sparkle to it), but again it's fairly flat, it won't plop under GW, and it's not very transparent, so making river and stream banks shallow and naturalistic is difficult.

That's as far as I've gotten so far.  I would like to hear from others who are trying to figure out this last obstacle and see examples of how any others may have solved it.

Lora/LD

[rdrdrdrd]

i know of one water set that has been made to match game water which solves the problem, the PPonds by peg, and his briganteen water texture, but that is the only one I know of

[Gaston]

    I know I personally do a lot of "naturalization" at the transition.    Lots of sand and rocks and boulders and various forms of PW as well.   Rarely do I use plant life.   I feel there isn't alot out there that is scaled correctly or has the right color to it.    Most seems way too green/tropical looking.     If I could figure out how to tone down the green-ness I might use it more often.   

    Of a similar problem is if I use GW to make a bridge across a PW stream/river.     Currently I am working on a region where a large portion of the terrain is only a few meters above "sea-level".    When making suface streams it is very easy to just terraform a few meters lower where I want a bridge to cross.    Then I have to "naturalize" the area to match the rest of the stream.     Sometimes the transition in and out of GW is the real challange.     I think it takes alot of practice, because I seem to be getting better at it.

   What is needed it some turbulence that could be placed in GW.    Actually some "ploppable" turbulence in the form of small rapids would be of a great deal of help.    I think I have all the "turbulence" currently available.   All are great but all lack something.    I'd love to see some sort of bubbling brook turbulence that could be plopped ontop of PW/ploppable rocks, etc.

   Well there are my thoughts so far.   lol
Edit Heres some pics of recent stuff:







And some thumbnails to click on as well.







---Gaston

[ldvger]

Good to see a discussion started!

rdrdrdrd, I have the Brigantine water mod installed and all of PEG's PPond kit with the Tahoe water and do not find them to be a good match to each other, especially in shallow GW.  The Brigantine becomes rather muddy as it approaches shore, becoming a greyish-brown color that doesn't in any way match the slatey-blue of the Tahoe PW.  Also, the Tahoe PW won't plop under GW, which leaves a visible graphics "hole" between PW and GW.   

Gaston, I've had some small success using the "cover up" technique as well, but again it's lacks the realism I am seeking.  In RL, there really aren't any barriers between fresh water and sea water, in fact an important inter-tidal area is usually formed that supports an array of unique plants and animals that are adaptable to both conditions.  Also, there is rarely any magnitude of turbulence, as by the time fresh water meets the sea it has been traveling at near sea level for quite a ways and what creates turbulence in water is 1) obstacles around which it must move and 2) slope across which it flows.  Stream dynamics (which I took a class in college about years ago) are such that by the time a fresh water body meets the sea, all the large objects the stream may have carried while flowing at a steeper/faster rate upstream have already been deposited.  At sea level, the fresh water body is not flowing fast enough to carry objects large enough to create obstacles it must then flow around.  In fact, by the time fresh water bodies meet the sea, they are usually only carrying a fine suspension of silt, which creates the magnificent braided (and treacherous for boats/ship) river deltas I spoke of in my post above.  So while the cover-up technique can effectively mask the PW/GW transition areas, it doesn't create a very naturalistic look, at least not to my OCD eyes. 

I was playing with one of my cities last night and yesterday, trying various tools and techniques.  I have a large river, about 12 cells wide, which I used deep GW to create.  I used a combination of God and Mayor mode terraforming tools, mostly Quick Level and Soften.  This large river runs off my region map, so transitioning it with PW upstream is not an issue.  However, there are lots of small streamlets that empty into the large river and those will have to be PW, probably PEG's Tahoe, as he has created a 1/4 cell plop that will be most useful for tiny little creeks.  Also, lucky for me, this large river is bounded by a fairly extensive system of levees (it's a RL river in the far northern part of the San Francisco Bay, the Petaluma River), so my plan is to use culverts to run the streams through the levees and let that be my PW/GW transition. 

This same city has a creek running from an adjacent city tile, actually across the two city tiles to it's west, Novato Creek.  It's fairly small, only about 3-4 cells wide and meets San Pablo Bay just south of where the Petaluma River does the same, so the creek contibutes to the larger river's delta formation.  This creek is also becomes levee protected as it approaches the bay, so again I'll use culverts to transition the creek's many tributaries.  But transitioning the creek itself is going to be a little trickier.  Again, lucky for me, there is both a highway and a railroad that cross the creek, and the railroad is actually built on top of a levee, so I think I'll once again be able to use a series of culverts through the RR levee to transition the creek.  I tried last night to use a small Quick Level brush to drag GW far enough upsteam in the creek to meet the RR levee, but didn't get very good results.  Today/tonite I think I'm going to try the Valley tools and see if I can get a better result.  I don't want the creek to be GW once it leaves the city tile, as it runs across two more tiles and starts semi high up in the hills to the west, in a lake, so I must transition the creek fairly close to the bay shore.

I'll take some pics of what I've done so far and post them here later.  Maybe by then I'll have figured out the creek transition, too. 

And please, anyone, everyone, post pics of how YOU have created PW/GW transitions.  Also tell use the tools you use, including any mods.

Lora/LD

[Ennedi]

Hello Lora,

I collected some information about making GW/PW transitions in the SC4 Landscape Designers Development Thread. I posted it there because I promised it, and you was also asked me about transitions in that thread.

I also see you make much terraforming. SC4 terraforming tools are absolutely precise and you are able to create any shape you want. It only needs some patience. Here are two of my tutorials which can be helpful for you:

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2165.0
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=6405.0

And of course you have many David's excellent terraforming tips in 3RR! 

Adam

[ldvger]

Ennedi-

I am currently monitoring 3 threads on this subject...this one, the one in the Landscape Design Studio, and one I created over on ST on the SC4R General Game Discussion board.  The ST thread has fallen off the front page due to lack of response, so I doubt I'll monitor it much from here on out, as not too many ST folks seem to be very interested in addressing the PW/GW issue.

Your new post on the LDS board shows some very good transitions, especially the East/West appearance of the custom waters you created.  Any plans to release those to the general public anytime soon? 

My only question to you right now is how you get PW to plop under GW, as I have had no success in doing so myself.  With the GW at normal level, I get a "cannot build on water" message when I try to plop PW under GW.  I have tried raising terrain, plopping water, then lowering terrain and when I lower terrain all the plop water bulldozes itself.  However, I am using Edmonton v2 in addition to Brigantine as my water mods right now, so maybe the Edmonton is interfering.  I'm not totally sure what the Edmonton v2 does other than I can't get the Edmonton PW to work without it.  It seems to underlay waterever water mode I use, including the game default water, making it darker. 

I was saddened to read that using the TPW looks to make PW/GW transitions impossible, as I really, really like the TPW appearance for shallow streams.  I have been thinking of using the same PW all across my region but now I am thinking I may use different ones for different conditions.  I've also found that using TPW as an overlay over an opaque PW creates some very naturalistic effects in terms of giving the illusion of increasing depth. 

I had read your first fine terraforming tutorial a week or so ago but not the second, so thank you very much for the link.  I was not aware that the level tool could be used across slopes to create a uniform slope or knife-edge ridge...good to know, that information will come in handy.  I have been using jeronij's method of flatten the top and bottom of a non-uniform slope using inididual steert tiles, then running roads down the slope, one beside the other, then bulldozing it all.  Quick, easy, and while it costs money, I use the Moola cheat so I never worry about spending money in my cities.

One thing I did notice is that in almost all or your pics you have waves turned off.  I really like the waves effect on my seashores and don;t really want to turn them off.  I am trying to figure out some way to so gradually grade the seashore that waves don't occur even with waves turned on.  Do you think this is possible or does the game engine automatically create waves regardless of underwater terrain depth (or do you know)?  Waves are another issue to resolve in the PW/GW comundrum.

Lora/LD

[TheTeaCat]

This is about the best i can do using stuff available at the mo



Here i use jeroni's brown TPW and his dirty water effect to try to mask the transition.
I can explain more if you like just thought I'd post this quickly to see if this was the effect you were on about


TTC

[ldvger]

Teacat, yes that's the general idea but definitely not the type of look I am ultimately hoping to achieve.  What you are illustrating here looks to my eye like a toxic oil spill!  Also, I notice you have waves turned off, too, which I have noticed a lot of folks do when taking pics of PW/GW transitions, which is another thing I would like to avoid, as I like seeing waves along my seashores.  However, I don't want waves in my GW rivers/streams/creeks, so waves are a problem I am trying to figure out a way to get around.

Lora/LD

[rdrdrdrd]

I think it looks good if done the right way
here is one example

and after the finishing touches

[ldvger]

Teacat's comment and pic has been running around in the background of my thoughts for the last couple of days and tonite I thought maybe I was taking the wrong road with my efforts to create good PW/GW transitions.  I've been trying to keep the PW blue and the GW blue, and it just hasn't been working well, although I've gotten close a couple of times. 

But let's face it, by the time an above ground body of moving water meets sea level, it's been moving slowly over a fairly flat surface for quite some time (in most cases) and unless it's a really big, deep river, it's color isn't really blue...it's brown, mostly due to the silt load suspended in the water.  Thinking back on the satellite pictures of river deltas we've all undoubtably seen, I realized that the river channels I've been touting are not blue but are brown.  It's the sea level water that is blue.  So I began to think I was going at this all the wrong way around. 

So tonite I fired up my game and started playing around with a couple of ideas.  First of all instead of gouging a channel from deeper GW to an arbitrary location to transition it with PW, maybe what I really needed to do was extend my shallow land near the seacoast further out into the GW, thereby raising channels for the river bed instead of lowering them.  Also, maybe I should use a brown PW instead of the many various shades of blue available, as none of the blues really match GW, even with water mods installed, very well. 

So that's what I did and here are the results.  This is a "down and dirty" experiment and lots of finesse would need to be yet applied, but I am actually rather impressed with the results.  The following pics show the same transition from all 4 points of the compass and as you can see, it doesn't really have a "bad side":









I am using Cycledogg's "Italia" terrain mod with the optional "Olympic Beaches" installed.  Also in use is PEG's "Brigantine" water mod and jeronij's muddy brown TPW.  And the key is, as Teacat suggested, jeronij's "Dirty Water" plop to soften the transition between the TPW and the GW.  It's a little tricky to accomplish, but this is how I went about it:

First, I used a God Mode level brush set small (1) at a close zoom to slowly push my river bed out to sea, after I first raised terrain to drop sea level and be able to see what I was doing.  When I had reached the natural confluence of sea level to river mouth, I stopped and lowered terrain back down to restore sea level to normal.  In future if I use this technique again, I'll be more careful to soften the transition area, as yu may be able to see some darker TPW areas at the transition area and I would'nt want that. 

Second, I used the muddy brown TPW liberally but carefully and laid the river bed out across the above sea level land all the way to the edge of the city tile.  Then I zoomed in closer and started laying TPW tiles carefully over the very shallow GW.  What is especially nice is that the TPW covers up the waves that so very much bug me at PW/GW transitions.  Once I start plopping the TPW along the sea level shore line, I start filling in beach areas and beging to taper the TPW off as I move away from the river mouth.  All I really want to do is cover up the waves and create a transition zone and if you look close you can see that. 

After I have all the TPW in place, I then very carefully start plopping down some dirty water.  Before I started doing this I plopped it once in open ocean to see what it looked like away from land and it forms a circle several cells in radius, darker in the middle and fading towards the edges.  If it overlaps itself, it becomes darker in the overlapped areas and too dark to match well with the TPW that's been overlaid the GW, so care is needed in placing it.  These pics show I missed more times than I hit, but still show that an almost completely seamless transition is possible. 

What do you think?  Am I on to something here? 

Lora/LD

[sithlrd98]

Not that this will help , but it may make someone go AHHA! A while back , I was trying to get JRJ plop water to match Pegs brigatine. I never fully finished it (did not darken etc, but basically most of the grunt work was done in PS and then I had to re-insert each FSH file to line up for each S3D...kind of a pain , but perhaps the same technique could be used for Davids (Dedgrens) TPW?

I never was able to get this working 100 percent and have not re-visited...actually forgot all about it!



Jayson

[cheezymadman]

Previous SC games gave you the option to plop water right out of the box, if memory serves. Why that was ever taken away, I don't know.

But what's stopping people from simply taking the game water textures (or whatever the terminology is) and just making a ploppable version?

[swat-medic]

It has something to do with the fact that only the surface is the texture.. and the rest is some sort of coded mess.  I think Gizmo figured out how to change the sides of the water at the edge of map though...

[joelyboy911]

Well, one solution I can visualise is taking the mod that changes shallow water's transparency, and make it so that the game's water is 100% opaque. Then, only a tiny bit of turbulence would give you a perfect transition. Obviously this would mean that one couldn't possibly use any underwater flora, etc, etc ever again - but it would let you have a good PW/GW transition, I think.

[ldvger]

I think what we are going to have to do is create two things: 1.) a process for transitioning above sea level land with below sea level land and 2.) a set of PW tools that will make the transition between PW and GW as close to seamless as we can get it.

One of the big issues is waves.  I have seen some gorgeous PW/GW transitions, but they had waves turned off.  I don't know about you, but I want waves on those areas on my seashore that do not adjoin to PW.  That what's happens in RL after all...waves occur when sea water meets land.  However, waves don't hapen when rivers meet the sea because the change in bottom elevation is not enought to craete waves.  Do a short search on wave dynamics and you will find this is true.  Waves form according to the shape of the land underlying the shore.  The shallower the shore, the less waves. 

So, if we are to achieve a transition between PW and GW, we have to deal with the waves issue.  I have found that one can eliminate waves at shorelines if one makes the slope of the shore shallow enough.  This, I have found, is hard to do without extensive micro-terraforming.  If one has te patience for this, then it may be possble to transition PW to GW using PW tiles that 1.) can plop under water and 2.) come close to matching the GW.  The Tahoe PW and the Brigantine GW match pretty good, but are dependent on orientation of view.  I have not been able to find any other combination or PW and GW that melds as well, and believe me, I have tried.

The best way to solve a challenge is to identify the obstacles.  I think we are working to that end.  I think this is what we have discovered so far:

1.)  We have to find a way to either disguise or eleimate waves at PW/GW transitions
2.)  We have to find a way to match colors between GW and PW
3.)  We have to define a process for achieving this trnsition.

In our own ways, we are all working on trying to solve these issues.  My purpose in starting this thread was to get a dialog going and hoepefully folks wpuld start working together. 

This is, in many ways, the last big hurdle to overcome, for those of us determined to create naturalistic landscapes in our game.  We have what I think is a great start going...but I think we still have a long way to go.  Just my opinion...

Lora/LD

[joelyboy911]

I know what you mean, in that regard. There shoudn't be any turbulence at the point where a stream (for instance) meets the ocean on flat (or flattish) land, so there shouldn't be any waves or turbulence at that junction. Perhaps, a BAT could be made using the same texture as the PW, with an increasing transparency, that could be placed heading out to sea, that would allow a smooth transition. It would, however, probably have to be lot based, for the orientation et cetera. Also, using the Tahoe PW is basically out of the question, as pegasus is generally disinclined to share such things.

[Gaston]

Lora,
  I think this is it in a nutshell.   

The best way to solve a challenge is to identify the obstacles.  I think we are working to that end.  I think this is what we have discovered so far:

1.)  We have to find a way to either disguise or eleimate waves at PW/GW transitions
2.)  We have to find a way to match colors between GW and PW
3.)  We have to define a process for achieving this trnsition.

In our own ways, we are all working on trying to solve these issues.  My purpose in starting this thread was to get a dialog going and hoepefully folks wpuld start working together. 

I think #2 will be the most challenging because of all the different water mods out there.   I know that was probably one of the very first things I changed all those years ago.   You know, to make it not the "vanillia" game.    There was a time I would switch water mods every other time I played.  I now play almost exclusively with one of MAS-sans great water textures.    It is just transparent enough to show wharves and seawalls well, but it does mask a bit of the underwater flora.   Untill I see a better one come along I'll most likely keep this one.


---Gaston

[SC4BOY]

(coming from one who doesn't know) I just saw a thread about "transparency maps" or "opacity maps" ..forget which.. in the last 24 hours ..  but it blended over/under textures on a beach.. perhaps someone who knows about that thread might try it on water?

edit: I've come across that thread here so you can see what I meant

[ldvger]

SC4BOY says:

it blended over/under textures on a beach.. perhaps someone who knows about that thread might try it on water?

You might be on to something there.  You tickled my brain with that thought and so I went back and looked at a region I was fooling around with years ago, a custom map of the Palm Island in Dubai that I remembered plopping a lot of beaches on.  So I fired up my game, loaded the region and found the beach areas.  I also found a Beach tile in my Parks/Rewards menu and started plopping it, but it was different from the beaches I had plopped years ago.  So I peered into the folder I keep all my custom content in and found a subfloder titled Beaches, opened it up and found a packet of custom beach tiles.  I installed them in my plug-ins folder and again played a round with them for a few minutes and this is what I came up with:



Doesn't look like much, I know.  But, there is a tile included in this set called Underwater Sand that plops under water (duh) that could be promising.  Perhaps it's color and/or texture could be modified?  Also in the pack is a Link tile just one cell wide that could be a "base" for transitioning from PW to GW?  There are also tiles designed to go around terrain corners, both inside and outside. 

Just some ideas.

Lora/LD

PS: What about changing the color of jeronij's "dirty water" plop from brown to a blue that matches his blue TPW?  That might be something worth looking into.  How would one go about doing something like that?  I'd be happy to give it a try, if someone gave me a couple of hints...

[joelyboy911]

You weren't keen on a BATted piece to fade away? You would plop it on a lot at or near sea level, and join the PW to it (the PW and join piece share a texture at one end) and it appears to disappear.

I don't think the dirty water plop can be changed easily, as it is the water pollution effect from the game's original set of such things, is it not?