Flowing water

See also:  Moving Water

Flowing Water

1. Use GCFScape to extract "root\cstrike\materials\models\props\CS_militia\river01.vtf" from "counter-strike source shared.gcf"
2. Place this file in your "<game>/materials/flow" directory and then restart Hammer and/or the Source SDK.
3. Create a .VMT file called "flow" in the same directory and paste the following inside it:

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
	"$basetexture"	"flow/river01"
	"$translucent"	1
	"$nocull"	1
    	"$decal"	1

	"Proxies"
	{
		"TextureScroll"
		{
			"texturescrollvar" "$baseTextureTransform"
			"texturescrollrate" .15
			"texturescrollangle" 270.00
		}
	}
}

Straight

1. Create your water geometry and give it a nice water material.
2. Copy all of your water geometry and place this copy one unit above and away from the original geometry.
3. Texture the surface of this new geometry in the new "flow" material.
4. Adjust the scale and shift to conform with the edges of the water.
5. Compile.

Corners & Turns

1. Create your water geometry and give it a nice water material.
2. Copy all of your water geometry and place this copy one unit above and away from the original geometry.
3. Cut this copy into shapes of the correct dimensions for sewing ( 64 x 128 x 256 512 x 1024 x 2048 x etc depending how wide your river is go to the nearest value).
4. Texture the surface of this new geometry in the new "flow" material (we will call this textured face "face x").
5. Using the "Texture Application Box" make the top "face x" a displacement (the higher the power, the more power you have to pinpoint turns).
6. Use "Paint Geometry" with the axis set to either X or Y axis and move the edges of the water flow to match up with the original waters boarder/containment.
7. Make use of the "sew" tool to keep all the flowing-water displacements connected. Make sure when you are finished the geometry of the water-flow, to align the texture on each of the cuts so it flows correctly and consistent with the flowing animation.
8. Compile.

Troubleshooting and Notes

• To distribute a map using this method you should include the "river01.vtf" and "flow.vmt" files in the BSP using a program such as Bspzip, or distribute a .RES file with the map (zipping is more reliable).
• If the water appears to be flowing the wrong way, or upstream, set the texture's rotation to 180.
• For extra realism particle, splash and sound effects will be required. The env_embers entity can be used to simulate a splash effect.

See Also

• Alpha channel
• Creating a Material
• Creating Decals
• Creating Materials
• Half-Life 2 Shader Fallbacks
• Shader Types and Parameters
• Water

External Links

• Creating Scrolling materials
• Interlopers.net Waterfalls Tutorial - A similar method for creating flowing water.