I have been playing with the asset manager and figured a few things out to make water look better.

I'm sure the good guys will improve emensly on what im putting, but its a start.


Fisrt off get yourself a cubic map anything will do as we will just do test for the moment, a cubic map is 6 different or quite similar textures. They have to be TGA files. The files need to have _FT,_LT,_RT,_BK,_UP,_DN at the end, something like this water_ft.tga etc etc. Copy these files to your main/images folder ( make a images folder if yu dont have one)


Once you have that done its off to the asset manager.

Asset manager --------

Make a new file call it watertest so you remember, and dont use caps that will bugger it up. Select material in the box below the rename button.

Now eneter the follwoing settings

materialtype = water

surfacetype = water

usage = liquid

locales = any one will do, I suggest using poland as it empty

blendfunc = blend (so that you can alpha blend the water.)

cubic env map = This points to the watertexturename_ft.tga file.

Special surface properties = nomarks, nolightmap, nodynamiclight, nocastshadow, nonsolid, detail. I have played with this and these setting seem the best.

Now save as the name you used in the first part which was watertest (this is important that you save as the name you used to start)

Test on map and see if it works. It should work fine.

If it has good job.

Now you can go back to asset manager open you watertest if its not still open and play with the water map section which has texture width/height etc, you can change the colour etc.


I hope this makes sense and I hope its helpful.

The pros will come along soon im sure and give better options.

When I tried it, it asked me for the file Call of Duty 2\texture_assets\case\case64blue.tga


I made a tga file called the same (just to make it work). When I load the game the water is still blue and does not use the textures I specified. I also cannot change the colour of the water?

Any help would be great, I'm really wanting to be able to change the colour more than anything else.

E-Luminate writes...

when you made the case64blue.tga make sure it goes in that directory specified "Call of Duty 2\texture_assets\case\case64blue.tga"
It does not matter what image you use to make that file anyway because it does not get used.
The water you see in your game is made from the new water texture you created in the asset manager , the cubemap is what gets reflected on the surface and the color of the water is set from the rgb values you used in the asset manger. In case you never noticed the color values are right above where you entered in your cubemap in the asset manager.

Allmost forgot to ask my question...lol why does the tutorial say for dx7 shouldn't it be dx9?

edited on May. 24, 2006 09:42 am by veef

Anything I enter into the color values, it automatically resets back to 1?

E-Luminate writes...

Are you using too high of a value? it only goes from 0 - 1

where do you get the water.tga. is this a custom texture you have to make using photoshop or is it in the game somewhere?