Toxic Looking Water Texture ???

[Open Blade]

If I want to change the color of water to say a greenish hue, to show that it's toxic from chemical spills, what's the best way to achieve that? I have a bunch of request for one of my maps to show something like that so people know it kills you (since there is a hurt brush on it). They can't seem to read the frickin signs so I guess I need to do more.

Do I just take a stock water texture and change color? Is there anything different about a water texture that I should know about? Can you do an overlay on water?

The desired look would be to have the water a slight greenish hue with a sorta greenish gas coming up. Can anybody give me tuts on how to get this look? Thanks

[Dox]

This may be some help:
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=167

I would probably use GCFscape and take a valve water and alter it in PS to give it a greenish cast.

[Armadillo of Doom]

Since TF2 lacks a toxic texture, there are ways to fake it. First make your water using the 2fort texture, regular or cheap. Then stack a nodraw brush overlapping the water (same size) and transform it into env_bubbles. Next, add a regular light to the 4 corners of the water, but move them closer to the center. Change the color to bright green. Last, add env_sprite in a few places.

You'll have to mess w/ the settings on everything to achieve the look you want. Ideally, you'll get a light-pulsing neon green, with some bubbles. The effect will be enhanced if the area around the toxic water is dark. Hope this helps

[Open Blade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Immortal-D

Since TF2 lacks a toxic texture, there are ways to fake it. First make your water using the 2fort texture, regular or cheap. Then stack a nodraw brush overlapping the water (same size) and transform it into env_bubbles. Next, add a regular light to the 4 corners of the water, but move them closer to the center. Change the color to bright green. Last, add env_sprite in a few places.

You'll have to mess w/ the settings on everything to achieve the look you want. Ideally, you'll get a light-pulsing neon green, with some bubbles. The effect will be enhanced if the area around the toxic water is dark. Hope this helps

Thanks, I'll give that a try. But first, I need more info on just how to change the 2fort texture. Meaning, I know how to change the color in photoshop but which 2fort texture do I use? There are 3 2fort vtf files (dx80_tfwater001_dudv.vtf)(dx80_tfwater001_normal. vtf)(ftwater001_normal.vtf). And there are 7 2fort vmt files so do I need to do anything with those? Obviously I need to change at least one to the name of the new texture. I can figure the rest out but if somebody could help me with which vtf files to change and what vmt files to modify and if there is anything else regarding the texture itself.

[A Boojum Snark]

Thanks for finding and PMing me about it, I don't browse the forums that much lately. Posting here for all to see

Water in Source is largely real-time rendering and actually has no base VTF image, all the VTFs are normal maps and such to define the rendering. This makes it much easier to do what you want here. All we need to do is edit the $fogcolor attribute in all the necessary VMTs (four of them for the 2fort water, which I used) and rename them so there aren't any conflicts.

I've attached what I fiddled with to get you started, drop them into tf2/materials/water, but feel free to tweak the color yourself to suit your map and what you like. It's in standard RGB format.
If you don't know about it, you can use mat_reloadmaterial <path (such as water/water_toxicgreen)> to reload a single material while ingame for fast VMT/VTF change checking Add Immortal's sprite effect ideas and you should be good to go.

Finally, a couple example shots of what it looks like.

[Open Blade]

Slowly but surely. Okay, the water now appears green. I do see a few bubbles but you have to stare at the water for a minute or so to even notice a few bubbles. I need way more bubbles. The default setting was 2. What is the max number you can go up to? When I enter a new number, like 5, the field turns a color, not sure if that means it can't except that value or not.

And when I add the glow sprite, nothing happens. Matter of fact, you see the Hammer Sprite Icon in the game sitting just over the water.

Help???? Thanks much.

[A Boojum Snark]

There is no limit that I know of, just turn up the numbers, though it is tricky to find the right ones so that it looks good (depends on how big the brush is and stuff, I think). Also, the field color change just means it's non-default.

[Open Blade]

Quote:

Originally Posted by A Boojum Snark

There is no limit that I know of, just turn up the numbers, though it is tricky to find the right ones so that it looks good (depends on how big the brush is and stuff, I think). Also, the field color change just means it's non-default.

simple enough. I got that looking good but I can't get these damn sprites working. I tried both glow and heatwave. The glow ones dont do anything and the hammer icon is showing in game. The heatwave doesnt show but at least the icon isn't in the game. I figured a heatwave would look cool if I used a green light with it. What other method is there to create a green gassy like smoke coming from water? I think the green gassy look will be noticed more then bubbles. I wonder if a Func smokevolume would work best.