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Water Mesh

A water mesh is a loaded mesh usually used to create finite basins of an arbitrary form. The differences between the water mesh object and the water object are the following:

  • The water mesh can provide buoyancy simulation (it can have a body assigned).
  • The underwater mode is not available for the water mesh.
  • The water mesh can have multiple water levels. It means that you can create, for example, a water flow with height difference located above the sea level (i.e. the filling level of global water).

See also

Mesh Requirements

Water mesh can be of any arbitrary form and size, but there are also 3 major requirements:

  • The mesh should be flat and have a uniform grid.
  • The mesh should be oriented strictly along the axes.
  • The mesh should have the UV map. Otherwise, normal maps used to simulate water surface rippling won't be applied.

Besides these requirements, there are also several important notes:

  • Triangulation of polygons in the water mesh is not important for waves simulation as changes are made for mesh vertices. However, triangulation affects the final appearance of water surface during waves simulation. For example, appearance of the water mesh with polygons that are triangulated as follows will differ:
  • If one mesh is used to represent several water basins with dynamic reflections, they all should be exported on the same level (height) (as dynamic reflections are calculated correctly only for flat horizontal meshes exported on the same level). You still can create a mesh with different heights, however, in this case, you will be limited to static reflections only.
  • Scale of mesh UV coordinates affects appearance of water waves simulated by using normal maps. For example, if you apply the same normal map to 2 meshes with UV coordinates at the scale of 1:1 and 2:1 correspondingly, waves on the 2nd mesh will be narrower than on the 1st mesh because of normal map tiling.
    UV coordinates at scale of 1:1
    UV coordinates at scale of 2:1
  • To simulate a river flow, make sure that its UV map is rectangular.

Adding Water Mesh

To add water object of finite size to the scene via UnigineEditor:

  1. On the Menu bar, click Create -> Object -> Water Mesh:

  2. Choose a mesh to be used and place the water mesh object in the scene:

Editing Water

Settings of a water mesh object can be adjusted via the Nodes window:

  • On the Surfaces tab, water surfaces that determine optical and dynamic behavior of water can be adjusted.
  • On the Water tab, waves that determine periodic and sinusoidal nature of water can be set. Also on the Water tab, you can set a mesh to used for the water mesh object and specify a field mask.

Simulating Physical Interaction

To initiate physical simulation of water, it should have a water body assigned and enabled. These options are available only for water mesh objects, because of their finite size. If prolongation of the covered area is required, it can be done without the artists exerting additional efforts: water meshes are simply placed next to each other. However, the waves from the objects do not spread on the adjacent mesh. Sinusoidal waves can be synchronized, if necessary, by changing the sign of the amplitude value.

As an option, a body of the water can be named in the corresponding field to be identified and handled by UnigineScript.

Notice
Water meshes must be exported at the center of world coordinates; otherwise, some effects (for example, caustics) may not be rendered correctly.
Last update: 2017-07-03
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