Initial Setup
-
Setup a space for your fluid surface to occupy. A depression in terrain
or a subtracted brush hole in the floor of an interior room will be
fine. A fluid surface can react differently when applied in an interior
or exterior space (clamping), which I will talk about later.
Creating the Fluid Surface
- Go to Actor class browser->choose info->*Fluid Surface Info
- Right click on your empty surface with the default values. A square mesh grid with 32 x 32 spacing in Unreal units.
-
The mesh will be rectangular, oriented to the X Y world space and
cannot be rotated. It can be changed to Hexagonal if you want and it
has no LOD support so should only be used for small pods, pools, etc.
Customizing your Fluid surface
-
You will be able to get a good fluid surface by using mainly just the
FluidSurfaceInfo and Lighting Menus. Any other adjustments are minor or
not needed unless much more advanced features are required.
- To add Material:
Look in the Display properties and go to where it says skin, click on
the material you want to use in the texture browser, click add and then
use.
- Clamp Terrain: This
option creates the difference between and indoor fluid surface (created
inside of a BSP cut or static mesh) and a fluid surface created inside
of a terrain in an outdoor area.
-
The clamp tool allows the waves in a fluid surface to react with the
terrain. Allowing waves to bounce off banks and react with islands,
etc. This feature only works in terrain.
- Fluid Damping:
This controls how long a wave will roll before it dies away. The values
for damping are sensitive and should be kept between 0 and 1. Closer to
0 will be slower, closer to 1 will be faster.
- Fluid Grid Spacing:
controls distance between fluid vertices. Changes the size of the fluid
surface without increasing the number of verts. (Can decrease the fluid
effect if the verts are spread too far.)
- Fluid Noise Frequency: Controls the number of randomly placed ripples in the fluid surface. It needs to be higher than 50 or no ripples will appear.
- Fluid Noise Strength: Controls the strength of the randomly placed ripples. Don’t use much less than 5 or you won’t be able to see ripples.
- FluidTimeScale: Always leave this at 1 or the fluid won’t move.
- Fluid Speed:
Controls the speed a wave can travel across the surface. Reduce this
value to make the fluid seem thicker, increase for thinner, etc.
- Fluid X and Y sizes:
These allow you to change the size of your fluid surface without
spreading your vertices out and losing detail. Should be a power of 2,
and no larger than 256. Default is 32 X 32 unreal units.
- Shoot Strength: Strength of ripple when water is shot.
- Touch Strength: Strength of ripple created when actor touches or character jumps in water.
- Update Rate: Speed in which the fluid simulation is updated, adjust if the fluid seems jerky.
For additional help go to link below:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/FluidSurfaceTutorial
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