Are you guys sure that isn't meant to be frozen water>?

People want the water to look less realistic because realistic water "looks bad". Wow. :facepalm:

Yeah, but in the game sense, it is completely different. People have an issue with it because some people don't think that water looks like that in real life and yes, it can turn white like that because of the turbulence caused by rushing along rocks that saturate the water with air, which is where the white comes from and makes the water all frothy, which is what it looks like. I don't see what people have a problem with, it's the best looking white water rapids I've ever seen in a game and it acts like it's supposed to. Where it touches the rocks it has spray and people claim that they overlap at the end and thus it isn't real but what they don't realize is the two streams are on difference height levels so they aren't overlapping, one is rushing in a downward curve over the other. It's an optical illusion from where the picture was taken, but if it was zoomed out you would see where they would combine.



No, it's white water. Go http://www.youtube.com/user/bethesdagamestudios?blend=4&ob=4#p/a/u/0/ktexkeBpMCM and watch the trailer.

... They've explicitly stated that they're also using it for their particle/magic effects. This easily extends itself to the fire we've seen, the snow blowing around on the ground and off edges of cliffs/snowbanks/etc. If Havok Behavior is their only method of animation, what else do you expect them to use, exactly???

Please only correct people if you know you're actually right...

No matter how good the product is on this forum, we will always have people that are going to [censored] about whatever they can.

Oddly, the more I stare at it, the better it seems to look. Skyrim is controlling my mind.

white water rapids looks great in Skyrim, it must be a real hell to design and make it work in a game att this scale. I think people on this forums actually thinks that rapid rivers are clear as day and all blue and neat even in the hardets river current. :S go find a powerfull and huge river and waterfall and have a good look att it before you judge. The only thing bethesda could do is to make it a little more brutal, make the water hit rocks and make little waves. Anyway, I think it will turn out great.

But the problem with making the water all particle effects is that it takes insane processing power to do on a large scale. One time I tried to animate a wall of water and it was going to require rendering of something like 3 terabytes, a little bit much for anything short of a super computer to render.

Particle effects != Particle physics. What is with everybody today?

Particle effects = magic, the snow, water breaking against rocks, fire, etc.

... too be pre-beta looking? I mean, it still has NINE f***ing months to GO!!!

Me: Yes, I expected that. But when the game comes out, it will look amazing.

While the water may or may not look good. I thought the firey effect's looked stunning... :flamethrower:

But the whole water thing isn't just particle effects is it? There's the water mesh, the big thing with the streaming water texture. Wouldn't the particle effects be the little splurts of water against the rocks and all that?

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/Concepts/?action=view¤t=Waterfall.mp4

Large scale? You understand rendering particle affects can easily be done within line of sigh of the player a certain distance, etc? It's not like you have to render an entire river with it even thought eh player can't see it.

Uncharted 1 and 2 both had some great water effects and particle affects that affected things both ABOVE and below the water.

We aren't asking for the ENTIRE body of water to be treated as each individual particle, rather having particle effects applied where it makes sense, where the water crashes into objects and things.

i thought the water looked quite decent

Bethesda won't just sit on their asses up until release.

I really love anything they've shown in the trailer but the moving water just sticks out as a sore thumb. The still water looks fine from what I saw, even though it looks a bit bland in the distant LOD but my guess is that that's still being polished or the effect is disabled for consoles.

Looking at waterfalls in other games (like Crysis and Just Cause 2) the only real difference is the amount of particle effects. They use a lot less of them in Skyrim then they use in other games. If they add more foamy particle effects around rocks and a few steam-like effects to the edge of the rapids, it'll look a hundred times better. They could also make the animated mesh a bit more dynamic and non-flat so it doesn't look like a carpet but more like an uncontrollable stream of water. On top of that they can add a small transparent layer over it which makes it look less solid and more like actual water.

But if they keep it like this... I'll surely get over it. But it could use some polish.

I am quite aware and do you know what happens when you see an entire river of particle effects in your FOV? Your system will lag horribly and most likely crash on anything less than the best of computers. Sure, my computer could run it without lagging but Johnny Knocker down the street with a good computer but not a high end gaming computer watches as his computer catches fire. From what people have said, they want the entire water as spray particles. If people don't see the particle effects in the water, watch the video again. You can see as it moves, which the water looks great as what it is supposed to be, white water, and it has spray particle effect where it collides with rocks and what not. They did great with the white water rapids but some people don't have an eye for detail.

It's not like that water is their moving water, their moving water you can see in other scenes like the cave where he is launching a light spell from the staff or the waterfall in the cave where he makes a massive fiery explosion with a spell. Their moving water looks great, but that "waterfall" wasn't their moving water, it was white water rapids, which if you know what it's supposed to be it looks great.

Sleign you usually come up with good points and I respect your opinion but I really disagree with you here. The white water just doesn't really move realistically and looks too "dry". White water is supposed to be really violent and it should be splashing all over the place, but in the shot we've seen there's only a handful of splash particle effects. The rest is just an animated mesh, which makes it look rather unnatural. Just adding a white fog-like particle effect over the entire thing will already make quite a difference.

:flame: Indeed they did. :flame:

You can animate water meshes the same way as you can a person/animal. Havok Behavior does not discriminate. I would assume that these rivers are a combination of mesh animations (unless the vertices on the water mesh are *completely* unchanging... blech!) and particle effects, as you can see water breaking around rocks and shores. There are also mist clouds. If they've already said they are using Havok Behavior to animate the effects in-game, and this obviously includes the rapids to some extent. I can't tell you if they animate the actual texture via some proprietary means, or if they use Havok Behavior as well.

What this means is that replacing this effect (other than the base water texture) could be hard or impossible, which was my original point and what I was replying to, if you trace my replies all the way back to the source. No matter how they do the rapids animation specifically, it doesn't change my original point, and it doesn't mean what I said about Havok Behavior is wrong as you claimed. They've already shared that they're using it for the particle effects, and a lot of the water is a particle effect. The waterfalls, the mist, the water breaking, even the streams in the cave are an effect. They're an "effect" because they're obviously not simulating real water when you see these things, and they have to be animated in advance, so I would assume they're using their new animation tool which they've already stated they're using for character animation and effects.

I would also assume they're using it for facial animation. Havok Behavior certainly supports animation blending and morph targeting... They could more or less have created all the "sounds" your face makes (the shape it makes, called a viseme), and then in their dialog files have the face blend between all these sounds (called phonemes). And since they've stated that characters can now move about while speaking to you, this is very obviously the case... As they can let Havok behavior mix the cooking animation with the facial animation, or any other animation they wanted to. And then of course they would combine that with some Inverse Kinematics, like making sure the NPC is looking at you, and lining up its hands with the objects it should be manipulating.

Am I the only one who thought the flowing water looked great?

one of the few atlreast

Well you can't win them all over, I guess. Either way, huge improvement over Oblivion, great job Bethesda. :thumbsup:

It looked great for what they were trying to represent in that shot. The more calm flowing water can be seen in the scene where the hooded character walks into town and when you stab the guy by the river side.

I dunno my imagination , but i seem to remeber ,that T.H in a interview about the new engine, specificly went on to say about how good the new water effect's were..?

Anyway i trust they will look good in the final product :bolt: