Water and a bug?

[Fluen]

In the weekend I ripped a larger portion of "water" textures from TR7. In fact they seem to be the water reflection up on some metal construction in the party hall in Tokyo.

There is another TR7 water range available at trsearch.org, but I can't open it. I have tried twice to download it and my computer insists that the file is damaged. If anyone can unpack it I would love to have a copy.

I managed to make a fluently animating series of 31 of the tiles. It can't be divided. To give a proper speed of animation I set TREP to animating speed 2.

My problem lies mostly with the texture. I think it's because the graphics are unevenly spred over the tile. When I look at it I think of thick glue instead of water.

As an attempt I textured both sides of the water portal. But this stopped the normal water motion (the waves). It seems that if you texture the side of the portal from within the water room the game engine stops moving the water surface itself. I don't know if it's a bug (maybe Our Very Dearest Amateur Programmer Pyuaumch can explain why it does this - or even better solve it). It's really a shame because the two independent animations really gave a good looking water surface.

Right now my solution has been to put two sets of the water textures on top of each other in GIMP, which I'm a noob at using. If any of you experts on textures and texture programs want to have a look at it the tga-files are here (http://www.freewebs.com/fluen).The original textures have a colour that looks like neon lights are reflected in the water surface, so I removed the colour in my own version to give the water a natural look.

The animation only covers one tile so you must be creative in applying it. I haven't been able to avoid the lines between the blocks in game. The pattern I'm using goes like this:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f367/cfluen2/vandmnster.jpg

Pick the textures at random.
White: just apply a texture
Magenta: mirror the applied texture
Red: rotate the applied texture twice
Blue: rotate the applied texture twice and mirror it.

The final result looks like this:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f367/cfluen2/nytvandiepilog.jpg

Any ideas on how to improve it? A better way of applying the textures? A way to circumwent the "dead water"-syndrome?

[mizuno_suisei]

Hi Fluen, I dont know exactly what you are asking for, but how about Rotating the textures to fit? so you dont get cut-off textures on each sector. Even try Putting each different texture, in a line down so for the first sector, you use watertext1, then on the second sector, use watertext2. And so on.

Hope i have helped :)

[Fluen]

That's what I already doing. But contrary to the old water textures these texture were only meant to animate on one block (in TR7 one texture is spread over the whole metal beam). Hence my problems covering a larger surface with them.

[Fluen]

So...no experienced texturemakers have any advice to offer?

[Mulf]

Well, I never mirror or rotate animated textures, or place them at random. Provided your animation range is so arranged as to appear seamless (fluent transition from one texture to the next), all should be well if you apply them in the same sequence as in the TGA. (Of course you'd need to check their orientation, so you may indeed need to rotate them, but if so, rotate all of them equally.)

[Fluen]

I'll try and se how that works. Thank you.