Fog- yo should have a setting asking user for water clarity and a water depth.
In near perfect clear water fog is for objects far away- but in murky water its much closer.
JB
Just a recap of the work done so far:
youtube.com/watch?v=o1tZWXZDe_E
The background ray casting is not well captured in the video (distorted).
It may look better if the plants can swing in the water naturally.
yeah the plants need definitely to gently float to improve the realism
I guess need a final touch also to the stone caustic textures cos they don’t match the quality of the terrain ones - then should’ve done
Long time no see. I was busy on something else and so far not much time on this development for many months. In the holiday I manage to add the bubble effects, some waving plants and the jelly fishes.
I write a shader to stretch the shape of the jelly fish to make it looks more lively. Also the color is changing periodically. Here is a movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbI56VXjwog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m3Hbu2FBAA
Plants still not looks good.
Anyway, will release soon.
amazing job Cheung, I just can’t wait to have eyes on this wonder to study with
Nice.
How did you do the underwater caustics?
I wanted to do a similar scene and thought of projected seamless texture and a lerp function interval to change the uv position.
How about the sun rays? Is it camera angle dependant?
EDIT: Oh and couldn’t the jellyfish animation be done with bones instead?
underwater caustics is just the caustics texture blend over the ground with a simple task to move it accordingly.
Sun rays are just cheap transparent billboard plane blend with a preset animation. Sure it can be done more intelligently…but I make it cheap and simple at this moment.
Jelly fish, I don’t want to model it. So I use a downloaded picture and a shader to make it look better.
Well, my ocean floor model will be a bit big so I might still use a projected texture (I think it might be faster than tiling a texture on it few dozen times).
But thanks for the info.
Also you could have a look at function lerp intervals: panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Lerp_Intervals (bottom of page).
Thats a pretty easy way to animate uvs:
import direct.directbase.DirectStart
from direct.interval.IntervalGlobal import *
from pandac.PandaModules import *
caustics = loader.loadModel('causticsquad')
caustics.reparentTo(render)
causticstexture = loader.loadTexture("caustics.png")
ts = TextureStage("stage")
ts.setMode(TextureStage.MReplace)
caustics.setTexture(ts, causticstexture, 1)
# function interval to change texture uvs
def causticsFunc(t):
caustics.setTexOffset(ts, t)
causticsFuncLerpIval = LerpFunc(causticsFunc, fromData = Point2(1, 1), toData = Point2(-1, -1), duration=12, blendType='noBlend')
causticsFuncLerpIval.loop()Preset animation?
Does this mean no matter from where you look at it it has the same angle? For a static camera that doesn’t really matter, but for my project I think I should try to change the angle of the billboard with CompassEffect (don’t know how yet, panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Compass_Effects)
Well, I have not much time for this project, so most likely I will keep it simple at this moment. But I am thinking to write a shader for the rays.
a pirate boat with a huge octopus inside 
and it would much cooler if you have swarm formations in. do smaler fishes but descrease the count much up. and do in one shark which is splitting the swarm all the time.
im thinking about doing a swarm intelligence (birdswarm), i love this dynamic which comes along when a swarm get splitted and going back in formation.
dont laugh about the voice(its very hard to understand),but its really informative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-AZagVB4QA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a19YJy7Hb_k&NR=1
Not able to make a realistic scene yet:
Instead, use a blender created background looks better:
Now need to figure out to create a movie from the blender underwater scene with water caustics.
Is the background 3d?
What is that for?
Anyway, the new version looks better.
How about making better bubbles? Transparent and smoother would look better.
The aquarium which discussed here is finally available here: code.google.com/p/pandademomaster/downloads/list
It is far from the end-product that I would like to have. Especially the underwater effects are bad, the plants are bad, and I would like to use some more shaders in the static scene demo, so many incomplete items …. also if the fish eyes can be moved….
Unfortunately I am so busy on something else, I am afraid this little project is up to here. Have fun and play with the fishes, feed them and create bubbles with your mouse.