Transparent Surface Plopable water ... one step further ?¿

[Glenni]

hehe, gravity defying water.. Nice job though jeronij, this looks really, good , think you can make some variations too? like brown water, water which looks like it's covered by ice, and a version with a slight bit less blue colour?

[SimFox]

I would have to join Glenni on this one and suggest some other color...
I see problem with it as with many bats and mods little by little a moving the entire SC4 univers into more and more cartoony realm, with more prime colors, oversize and oversimplified shapes oversugary "sweet" props etc, etc. it all turns into barby-world (no offense to our Barby that is). Much of custom flora is of unbearable plastic green, and so is (I know I already got my bucket to collect vegetables past due date that will fly at me now) Colombia River mod.
I would say color scheme should be more in tune with either glenni's sewage works (which btw are WAY to clean (water-wise) for such an establishment, or more silvery grey as a reflection of the sky. Water wouldn't be blue in most cases not as long as you look at it at the angle and there is something else in sight. Reflection of the sky will be quite bright, rivers don't have (normally ) depth to generate rich bluish-greens of the seas, and water has much more of a sediment suspended and lining the bottom. To put long story short it just can not possibly be of such color, or better shouldn't be of such colour.

[Ennedi]

I must say I agree with Simfox's analysis. But making another colors described by him can be very difficult - how to make the reflection silver, not dirty-grey? I think Sorchin tried to make something similar, and in my opinion it wasn't success.

So I think Glenni's proposition (to make some variants) is very good. However, I can imagine the amount of work with the one basic variant and maybe it would be good to think about it after finishing the basic version?

[Shadow Assassin]

how to make the reflection silver, not dirty-grey?

It might require a lot of experimentation with opacity maps and colours. It should be possible to create a silvery sort of texture. But it would be very difficult.

Much of custom flora is of unbearable plastic green, and so is (I know I already got my bucket to collect vegetables past due date that will fly at me now) Colombia River mod.

The problem's with the game in that sense. If you've tried to render a plant with 'realistic' textures, you'd most likely find that it'll not come out right in game (most probably, it'd come out an unpleasant brownish-green)... it's more Maxis's fault because of the nature of the rendering in the BAT.

As for the Columbia River mod, Cycledogg's done the best he can do considering the limitations of the game. It turned out quite well, though, wouldn't you agree?


But here's a tomato for your bucket.

[jeronij]

Once the technique is perfectioned, a tutorial will be posted so you can build your own water version, with the colour, textures and effects that you desire  

SF, SC4 is not a graphically realistic game in any way, and it looked like a barby-world right from the vanilla version. It is not my purpose to change this. Forget about reflexions for this model. The game engine wont handle reflections, as far as we actually know. It will be better to use some lots with sparkles, like the ones that badsim created recently, to give this impression  of reflexions.  If you want to enjoy this game, accept its limitations and play with it and not against it  

Ennedi, I did not say that you can`t do it   , I said you shouldn't do it   . Read my last sentence to SF in this post  


I will probably release both versions of the fake water for the initial release.

[SimFox]

Well i would say games brownish green is much more natural looking that of Colombia River mod the grass there is of absolutely unrealistic hue and saturation and so is much of the flora. I wouldn't want to even talk of various flower mods...
But that is a matter of taste. I myself made one move in that direction with CandyGarden that was suppose to be two things  to show a bit different approach to flora models ( not RPC type, but high poly models) and in away tribute to outlandish candy colors of most of the peer stuff. BTW I would say that water then was pretty close to silver. And to hoot it was transparent (or to be more precise translucent) as well although that isn't too obvious but if you look at the rim of the pond can notice it.
To the point of HOW to make something. Well first of all it is of PARAMOUNT importance to clearly understand what is that you are trying to make. When say Silver - you should be able to describe the that silver in a considerable detail and no uncertain terms IN WORDS! many consider it  pointless step. But then tend to get lost trying to recreate basic materials that surround us in daily life and that seem so familiar. And it isn't a problem with tool - first of all toll it totally adjustable (that is about complain of bat doing this or that). Te key is to know what and how to adjust. And I don't mean how in terms of knowledge of the software, but in terms of the knowledge of object/material you are trying to make. It is not as simple as many think. So verbalizing it will help you to spot those black spots of unknown or undetermined that you should research more.
So to make something realistic (or NOT realistic doesn't make difference) you should be able to talk it first. If you can't then you wouldn't be able to make it.
that watter is as far as I understand is an overlay texture with particular alpha blending mode. so as such it probably could be totally independent from BAT altogether, right? it is just a 2 d bitmap after all why would you need a 3d modeling software for that??
I think the key in that development was Transparency. Although it is a buzz word in a community (along with reflections) but it is exactly something that makes it unrealistic. So the point is does it have to be transparet?? Even at the cost of losing realism?

SA:
tomato is accepted 

All that said it is JUST my opinion, based on MY vision of the game world and it could and most probably IS different that vision of many others.
One thing that is independent from these personal preferences is verbalization part.
DESCRIBE with precision and no ambiguity what EXACTLY you want to achieve. This is a KEY

[jeronij]

Well i would say games brownish green is much more natural looking that of Colombia River mod the grass there is of absolutely unrealistic hue and saturation and so is much of the flora. I wouldn't want to even talk of various flower mods...
But that is a matter of taste. I myself made one move in that direction with CandyGarden that was suppose to be two things  to show a bit different approach to flora models ( not RPC type, but high poly models) and in away tribute to outlandish candy colors of most of the peer stuff. BTW I would say that water then was pretty close to silver. And to hoot it was transparent (or to be more precise translucent) as well although that isn't too obvious but if you look at the rim of the pond can notice it.
To the point of HOW to make something. Well first of all it is of PARAMOUNT importance to clearly understand what is that you are trying to make. When say Silver - you should be able to describe the that silver in a considerable detail and no uncertain terms IN WORDS! many consider it  pointless step. But then tend to get lost trying to recreate basic materials that surround us in daily life and that seem so familiar. And it isn't a problem with tool - first of all toll it totally adjustable (that is about complain of bat doing this or that). Te key is to know what and how to adjust. And I don't mean how in terms of knowledge of the software, but in terms of the knowledge of object/material you are trying to make. It is not as simple as many think. So verbalizing it will help you to spot those black spots of unknown or undetermined that you should research more.
So to make something realistic (or NOT realistic doesn't make difference) you should be able to talk it first. If you can't then you wouldn't be able to make it.
that watter is as far as I understand is an overlay texture with particular alpha blending mode. so as such it probably could be totally independent from BAT altogether, right? it is just a 2 d bitmap after all why would you need a 3d modeling software for that??
I think the key in that development was Transparency. Although it is a buzz word in a community (along with reflections) but it is exactly something that makes it unrealistic. So the point is does it have to be transparet?? Even at the cost of losing realism?

SA:
tomato is accepted 

All that said it is JUST my opinion, based on MY vision of the game world and it could and most probably IS different that vision of many others.
One thing that is independent from these personal preferences is verbalization part.
DESCRIBE with precision and no ambiguity what EXACTLY you want to achieve. This is a KEY

.... the question is very simple.

What do you prefere?

a) No surface water. ( The original game) . Dont keep reading this thread. This is not for you 

b) Original Plopable water. Totally plain colours. Looks like stains of painting. It gives the sensation of water from far. The closer you go, the more unrealistic. You can also follow your way. This thread is not for you either.



c) Transparent plopable water. Allows a pseudo-3d feeling if you use it properly. In the closest zoom levels looks more credible that the previous plop water. If that is what you like, this is the thread to post you suggestions to improve this.



d) Other options. You can make your own proposals and experiments if you want. If you want to learn the technique, simply PM and I will tell you how to make that BAT transparent.


I always appreciate constructive criticism and ideas to help improve my projects, but I cant find this in your comments  . This project is not about discussing how the real water is or looks like, and what does transparency or translucency really means. Sorry  . It is about making the fake water look more credible ( perhaps this is a better word that realistic) in game.

[Ennedi]

 If you want to enjoy this game, accept its limitations and play with it and not against it  

I'm very glad you said it. My way of playing SC4 is in most part to check it's characteristic features and limitations, and then use them, not fight with them   I am trying to do all the time (with any success or not - it's another question )

SimFox: It is very good you started such discussion. I don't know if we achieve any conclusion now, but maybe some of us will change the way of thinking about SC4 itself and about creating visual effects.

Quote
Much of custom flora is of unbearable plastic green, and so is (I know I already got my bucket to collect vegetables past due date that will fly at me now) Colombia River mod.

The problem's with the game in that sense. If you've tried to render a plant with 'realistic' textures, you'd most likely find that it'll not come out right in game (most probably, it'd come out an unpleasant brownish-green)... it's more Maxis's fault because of the nature of the rendering in the BAT.

As for the Columbia River mod, Cycledogg's done the best he can do considering the limitations of the game. It turned out quite well, though, wouldn't you agree?

I agree with SA. Simfox, I understand your opinion about unrealistic green color in Columbia and some other terrain mods. But:
1. Of course, the neon green color of some trees is too much for me too , but remembering some mountain trips I know how vivid colors can have a meadow or forest - sometimes if you would look at the landscape as at the picture, you could say it is completely unrealistic
2. I am sure it is possible to make many interesting things with Cycledogg's mods, only slightly changing color adjustments of particular texrures. I was playing with some of these mods and after very subtle changes of hue etc. these textures look different - and interesting in my opinion. I want to start a side theme in my MD next week, it will be called "Terrain Mods Gallery" . I want to show how different mods (including Maxis one) look on the same terrain without any photoshopping, and this discussion motivate me to show some modifications. And if I can modify the color in Photoshop, why couldn't I change textures in the same (or similar) way?

Edit: I just read your last post, Jeronij.
The water you made is good - both first and second version. It will be useful for many people, and it will look fantastic. I want it! 
And what to do in future and what is better for whom - it's another problem

[BigSlark]

I really like the look of the water with waves, jeroni.

And as for the terrain hue discussion, the green of Columbia River is pretty close to the temperate rain forests of the North American Pacific Northwest. I'm not from there like Tarkus, but I've visited a few times and it looks pretty close to me.

Now the lack of a good sub-tropical and tropical terrain mod gets me thinking but I don't even come close to understand what c.p. does.

My only suggestion is that some better ground cover would look great. The dark green in c. from Jeroni's reply looks like dark green paint on the river bank..

Just my two cents.

Have a good day everyone!

Cheers,
Kevin

[BarbyW]

Many times I think we all forget we are playing a 4 year old game with a lot of limitations. We CANNOT and SHOULD not try to replicate real life fully as the game will not allow it. The best work is done within the limitations of the game working with them and not against them. We all also need to remember that we do not all see colours exactly the same. My view of a colour can be quite different to someone else's. The dark green in Jeroni's image c) looks fine to me and not at all like green paint but to Kevin it does. Why is right and who wrong? Neither as both see things differently.
I like this water even though water isn't blue but you cannot have real life stream colours as they would look very bad in SC4. We KNOW water isn't that colour but we can believe it is for the purpose of SC4.

[jplumbley]

"We must go forwards, not backwards.  Upwards, not forwards.  And always twirling, twirling towards freedom." - Bill Clinton, The Simpons

This is an awesome step upwards within the limitations of our amazing game of customization.

With that said, we all have differing opinions on how things should be or shouldnt be.  Everyone wants their city to be different, unique, beautiful.  We all know that there are many, many shortcomings and areas that needed improvement from the Vanilla game.  Thats what was so good about this game, if there weren't differing opinions, shortfalls or so called "bugs" in the game, we wouldnt have a community.  Noone would have been creating custom content, noone would be making mods to fix the so called "bugs".  If noone was making any of these cool new things in the game, this game would have died a year or so after it was released.  But it hasnt died and it still has alot of life in it.  We have to realize though that there are many limitations of a game that is 4 years old, computers today are stronger, faster and better, meaning they can handle more complex simulators, but our game wasnt designed yesturday, it was designed for computers 4 years ago, even for then it was desgined for the computer of tomorrow.  Physically our computers, even today cannot handle the complex simulators the would be required for everything that we want introduced into our game.  It will be 10 years before we get a computer with the complexity of full 3D-Rendering and the Simulator capabilities of SC4, you cannot have both right now.

Thank you everyone who creates something for our game...  I appreciate everything that is created, especially those like Jeronij and a few others who are pushing the limits of our game to make the boundaries a little more broad and give us a little more wiggle room to deal with what we have.

[dedgren]

It seems like I say this about every six months in response to something I see.

...the name of the game, after all, is Sim City...

I can't take credit for that- I read it somewhere over at ST a long time ago, but it strikes me that few truer words were ever spoken.  Maxis developed a city simulator that was never intended, as best I can tell, to provide much of anything beyond the rudimentary ability to model the natural world.  Oh sure, you could create mountains, you could dig rivers and lakes (after a fashion), and you could plant swathes of trees.  But these things never struck me as anything other than being intended as "space fillers" between those areas that were the object of the game- the cities.

That's where we stood in 2003.  The release of Rush Hour didn't change anything in that regard.

Fast-forward almost 5 years.  During that time, SC4 gods and geniuses like Pegasus, jeronij, Cycledogg and Sorchin, and more recently Chrisadams3997, have given us an increasing array of tools, techniques and things that provided for a vast expansion in our ability to create natural environments.  Assuredly, as SimFox here and others elsewhere have noted, this increased ability continues to have significant limitations.  Colors are a particular issue, and so is fine detail.  At some point, though, like our friend Ennedi says- one has to accept those limitations and play with them, and not fight with them.

A huge unspoken point here in dealing with the natural environment is that presented by the fundamental unit of the game's graphic presentation- the pixel.  Assuming most modern screen resolutions provide for around a hundred pixels per inch/2.5 cm, and assuming that most folks spend most of their time in the game at the middle zoom level, and taking into account that a game gridsquare measures 50 feet/16 meters on a side, a single pixel represents an object about two square feet/60 cm² in size.  It goes without saying that this is why folks find blades of grass and individual flowers so hard to mimic effectively in SC4. Just about everyone would agree that an area covered in rocks of that size would not properly be described as an area of gravel.  When one complains about blockiness and simplification at fine levels of detail, the complaint addresses something that we cannot do anything about no matter how hard we would try.  It's like the speed of light or absolute zero.  It's a limitation that isn't going to change, no matter what we might do.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Electronic Arts headed off in the direction of Sim City: Societies based at least in part on reasoning along these lines.  Most people who enjoy computer games don't play them on a $15,000 workstation.  The sorts of expectations that many in the community had for SC5, if even achievable, would have likely put the game outside of the limits of today's mass-market computers.  That's because, in addition to all those graphics, there's a complicated simulation running all the time at the game's core.  And then there's those darned absolute limits, as described above.  The more I think about this, the more it seems to me that SC5 was destined to be a huge letdown, no matter what direction it took.  It would've truly been a gift to the Sim City fanbase for EA to have simply released an expansion pack, even in 2007, that would have addressed and corrected what we considered to be a number of the game's major deficiencies.  But EA, like other businesses, isn't in the habit of giving gifts.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that we would be unreasonable if that's what we expected a company that's in business to make a profit for its shareholders to do.

I've wandered very far afield here from the intention of jeronij's posts in this thread.  I couldn't read the recent comments, however, and not take a minute to say these things.  When we tamper with the game in such an extraordinary manner as to create things like ploppable water, we have to set our own definition of what we're willing to consider realistic.  There's no way around that- something I do not say in sadness or resignation, but in recognition of the fact that what we do have with what we have made this game become is a wonderful thing, and focusing on exactly how wonderful or lamenting that wonderful does not equal perfect is just simply a waste of time.

My two cents, jeronij, is that what you have here, while not perfect, is entirely worthy of release.  I'd recommend you do that, and then let the huge development lab that is the user community go to work.  As hundreds of people incorporate ploppable water into their gameplay, ways to improve it that might not come to mind today will become apparent.  Further delay of even a day serves no real purpose.  Thanks for your hard work on this.



David

[Diggis]

You really are a lawyer to the core aren't you. 

[bat]

That is looking wonderful! Looking forward to the release of it...

[Pat]

My two cents, jeronij, is that what you have here, while not perfect, is entirely worthy of release.  I'd recommend you do that, and then let the huge development lab that is the user community go to work.  As hundreds of people incorporate ploppable water into their gameplay, ways to improve it that might not come to mind today will become apparent.  Further delay of even a day serves no real purpose.  Thanks for your hard work on this.

David first and foremost that last paragraph is what the community is about....  I for one cant wait to get ahold of the new PW and rework some stuff or make new.... Either way Jeroni I know you will make the best selection for us and give us nothing but great stuff to work with.... Thank you - pat

[Ennedi]

but you cannot have real life stream colours as they would look very bad in SC4.

This is true, and this is one of crucial points. It's true - not only for water, and not only for colors.

A few words about realism (without conclusion )

1. If I will go to any place, choose an object and start to make photos - at various time, weather conditions etc. - I will have a collection of different pictures. Wchich is realistic?

2. A photo image is something different than we see. But most of us will say the unedited picture is realistic, and never thought what exactly they have seen through their eyes - did they see such clear colors, such sharp forms?

3. If I'm staying at the rock wall and can touch it, I see it's colors, texture and form. When I will go away - let's say 500 m - I will not see "the same but less sharp and smaller". I will see something different - new colors, new forms. None of these views is more realistic than another one. They are simply different.

4. NASA publishes amazing images of galaxies. Are they realistic? Their colors are achieved because of very long time of exposition, you couldn't see them through your eyes.
I had to wear glasses first time when I was 4,5 years old. When I haven't glasses, I see unsharp forms and a radiance around every light source. Wchich view is realistic? With glasses or without them?

So, where is the standard? To be honest I think it exist, but it is not visual. It is in mind.

Personally, when I build something in SC4, I don't want to imitate the real world. I want to move a viewer's imagination. This "real" picture is in his/her mind. Or not - if not, I must try again

And I think this water moves an imagination of many people - read comments please

I don't know if it is important and useful in this topic. Just my opinion.

[Pat]

Adam i think you summed it up better in this one sentence right here....   "So, where is the standard? To be honest I think it exist, but it is not visual. It is in mind."  What more can be said other then " We see what We want to see"

[figui]

" We see what We want to see"

i support that

[zero7]

First I just want to say I love the new ploppable water - let's see it released and then the inevitable colour variations can follow.

Second, I'll leave you to contemplate these images and the wisdom of debating the colour of water ...

[Tarkus]

I thought I'd add my customary $3.80 for what it's worth.

Being a custom content creator and running an MD myself, the issues of scale and realism are two things I am constantly thinking about.  We all know there are various inadequacies in the game on this front, things that are out of scale (some quite dramatically).  So, on one hand, it's a game.  But the name also implies that it is a simulator.  As I see it, it is a game that is attempting to recreate something from the real physical world.  The question is, how accurate do you want to be, and perhaps more importantly, how accurate can you be within the game's limitations?  I can say with almost complete certainty that no two people are going to see eye-to-eye on how to create this balance between "game" and the "simulator".  As Pat put it, "We see what we want to see".  A very accurate way of putting it.  Some sort of compromise has to be struck.

Personally, I think that what Jeroni has done here with his new ploppable water is a remarkably accurate representation of real-world phenomena within the limits of the game, and I commend him.  In all honesty, I never used ploppable water before because the "flatness" of it bothered me, but once this gets released, I'll be plopping water like a madman.  Thanks, Jeroni, for this excellent new creation.

-Alex (Tarkus)