I am creating a waterfall using particles systems and I have implemented a particle system which simply shows falling water. If anyone has any ideas what sort of features the water fall should have (like different volumes of water randomly flowing etc.) and ways of implementing them that would be a great help. I am currently just brainstorming some ideas of how to represent a waterfall as best as possible in real time. So please if you have any ideas just post no matter how small it will be useful! Thanks a lot! p.s......... i have tried adding textures (which are white like the nehe particle system tutorial) to the particles which works. However, i want to be able to maniplate the colour of the texture to add depthe to my waterfall, i.e. make them more bluey. A simple glColor call doesnt seem to work. can anyone help on that front to? thanks again

Well, I dont have time right nw to talk about features, BUT, to make glColor calls valid for textures, you need to call glEnable(GL_COLOR_MATERIAL) somewhere before in your program
good luck!

Enough water moving becomes a thick mist pretty fast. If you just have alot of alpha blended particles that are all a very light blue moving rapidly and spraying wildly when they hit the ground, im sure it will look pretty good. What needs to be watched here is the uniformity of the particles falling. They should all be displaced both in position and movement vectors (some should be slightly further out then others, etc).

Another idea would be to make a textured "cloth" that moves, like its on an escalator or something, so that it is rotating, and have a few particles moving here and there.

Ultimately, I think the first particle system is better.

I wish you luck.
-visage

Jus keep in mind things like momentum and laminars flow, which is to say the closer the water particles are to the edges of the river/pipe/whatver, the slower they travel.

ah laminar flows! good idea! i also am simulating the plunge pool. so i need to think about how to show mist, bubbles, waves and stuff (and what the relationship is between them).


p.s. i tried that glEnable(GL_MATERIAL_COLOR) already and it didnt seem to make a difference.

Thanks man.

Well, for bubbles I would jus suggest using particles that have a 3-d lookig bubble texture. S'how UT2k4 does 'em.

For waves...would a simple "flag effect" surfice??

Why no one is referencing Perlin noise? It's a definite need to make surfaces and procedural deformations much more natural.
The amount of evaluations needed is a problem but depending on the machine targeted it could be affordable.

From my small experience with it, I think you can fetch noise() to a very simple function (such as quadratic distance from a reference axis) and get a result which "looks" similar to more complex and computationally expensive effects.

EDIT: wrong url syntax.

My LOTR Two Towers contest entry used Perlin noise to create a waterfall. It turned out pretty well. I was going to add particles to create a 'mist' effect as well, but ran out of time.

Enigma