
GTA V – The Wormy Fountain - tobr
https://simonschreibt.de/gat/gta-v-wormy-fountain/
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Animats
It's quite possible to do an impressive water simulation in real time. Here's
one on WebGL.[1] Very impressive demo. But you need most of a GPU to do it.

The fountains in GTA V are just playing a short texture animation on repeat,
plus a particle effect for water droplets. They have a whole game to run and
can't devote too many resources to water. GTA V does amazingly well at keeping
a large number of active objects moving around.

GTA's ocean water is quite elaborate. There are waves, you can jet-ski on it,
and the effects all work together well. Much more impressive than the
fountains.

I once briefly met the guy who did the first good water shader, for Softimage.
That had synchronized levels of detail, so you could see fine detail close up
yet see all the way to the horizon, and the waves matched up. Not real-time,
but it was the 1990s. First used on _Waterworld_ , which didn't get that guy
any attention. Then used on _Titanic_ , which did.

[1] [http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/](http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/)

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limomium
Your water simulation example isn't impressive. It doesn't splash nor wave.
It's just a simple rippling, refracting surface.

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JMill
Try pressing 'G' to turn on gravity.

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simonh
Also click and drag the ball, lift it up then press G to see it bob around and
displace the water.

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rob74
Forget "Men Who Stare At Goats" \- now we have "Thugs who Stare At Fountains"
:D

But jokes aside, this is a really interesting and approachable article! It
just suffers a little bit from the writer not being a native speaker. I'm
German myself, maybe that's why I notice the German tendency to "concatenate"
words (e.g. "surface-topology" or "cloth-simulation") even more when it is
(mis)used in English? Just some constructive criticism, in case the author
reads this...

...and of course it should be "Mortal Kombat" ;)

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simonschreibt
Thanks for the hints! :) Yeah my English isn't that good. I use it sometimes
to - often - to make sure its understood that the words belong together but
let me look up the rules... ...ah, there is no rule :D It is recommented to
check the dictionary :D

p.s. I've also changed it to Mortal Kombat :)

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swinglock
Getting a hang of when to use "its" and "it's" is more important, if you don't
mind me saying so.

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NikolaeVarius
It's not like native speakers care for the distinction.

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gruez
Thats a pretty low bar too set. in a informal context, native speakers will
forgive most other grammatical mistakes as well.

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scolby33
I see what you did there, I think. It’s interesting: I don’t mind
capitalization and the a/an substitution here, although I could see the
capitalization being confusing in another context. However, it’s/its and
to/too almost always take me out of the flow of the text and force me to read
it again to figure out the proper meaning. As a native speaker, I would still
say I forgive the mistakes, but they do undoubtedly hurt my comprehension of
whatever I’m reading.

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djsumdog
The "Wedding Cake" fountain is one that this guy covered when he talks about
Super Mario Galaxy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rCRsOLiO7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rCRsOLiO7k)

It's not quite the same, but it's interesting to see all the things they do to
get that cool water level effect.

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Jasper_
Heh, that's my video! Thanks for the shoutout.

Galaxy has the other approaches too, you can see a Tongue Fountain over in
Beach Bowl Galaxy.

[https://noclip.website/#smg/HeavenlyBeachGalaxy;ShareData=AA...](https://noclip.website/#smg/HeavenlyBeachGalaxy;ShareData=AA|wOUn%5elrT@RYB9dh%7b%5e=A\[7n5/KhWUo\[S?UA|c%28WJo%5eTUGmA\[9XiojUe$|cWPA)

A few of the effects also have variants of the "Wormy Fountains" style, most
notably in the Warp Pod code. Their particle system lets them do those sorts
of "Stripe Particles" as they call them, as well.

[https://twitter.com/JasperRLZ/status/1241799758907236355](https://twitter.com/JasperRLZ/status/1241799758907236355)

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simonschreibt
Just watched your video. It's really cool! (and makes me a bit jealous :D 600k
views, wow!!! My best video had 22k and only because it was a talk I have on a
stage at UnrealFest)

What Software did you use to animate your examples so nicely? The example-
pictures and texts move very nicely around on your slide.

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altitudinous
The water effects in "Sea of Thieves" are extraordinary.

I'm not a big game player, but am tempted to purchase just so I can watch the
water.

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muststopmyths
Far Cry 5 as well has some fine water in its rivers.

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djsumdog
Huh .. I wish I had paid more attention. I played through FC5 .. it did have
some really amazing animation, and the lakes looks cool for sure.

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2sk21
Love this exposition of visual effects!

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MaxBarraclough
Forgive this being slightly off topic, but you might also enjoy these posts of
a similar flavour, on the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

I particular enjoyed the _Silhouette Effect_ section in the first of the two.

[https://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/03/10/deus-ex-
huma...](https://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/03/10/deus-ex-human-
revolution-graphics-study/)

[https://lousodrome.net/blog/light/2015/05/18/reverse-
enginee...](https://lousodrome.net/blog/light/2015/05/18/reverse-engineering-
the-rendering-of-a-frame-in-deus-ex-human-revolution/)

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simonschreibt
Not to forget the amazing breakdowns about shadow of the collosus and
assassins creed:

[https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2012-10-breakdown-shadow-of-
the-c...](https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2012-10-breakdown-shadow-of-the-colossus-
pal-ps2)

[https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2015-12-breakdown-assassins-
creed...](https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2015-12-breakdown-assassins-creed-ii-2)

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josephtaylor1
A prominent Rockstar Games leaker with a proven track record, known as
gonnaenodaethat in the GTA Forum, claims a legitimate reveal date will happen
later this month. I got the news from <a
href="[https://www.gamivo.com">gamivo.com</a>](https://www.gamivo.com">gamivo.com</a>).

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fidel100
Great post!!! It remainds me of Okami. I bet they used this kind of technique
somewhere.

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Jasper_
Okami's wind spiral effects are, believe it or not, mostly static geometry,
with some cleverly placed vertex colors and masks to handle the fade-outs. You
can see a mini-breakdown of the effect here.

Scrolling textures can do a lot!

[https://twitter.com/JasperRLZ/status/1173397034088271873](https://twitter.com/JasperRLZ/status/1173397034088271873)

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danba340
Awesome!

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mhh__
Slightly off topic but the level of technical and artistic detail in GTA5
never ceases to amaze me.

It's shame it's so muddled thematically but it's a tour de Force of game
development

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grenoire
I think Rockstar truly took that attention to detail to the next level with
Red Dead Redemption 2. Everything is taken into account, down to the animal
behaviour. You can even spot birds! [https://www.audubon.org/news/birding-
its-1899-inside-blockbu...](https://www.audubon.org/news/birding-
its-1899-inside-blockbuster-american-west-video-game)

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kabes
I sometimes just start rdr2 just to be amazed again on how far game
development has come. It's a shame though that as an programmer, I can't
really play games anymore without constantly thinking: "how is that made?" And
before I know it I'm taken out of the game and imagining algorithms. Very
annoying, but can't help myself.

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justaj
For me I can't play games anymore because there's something in the back of my
head going "Why am I not learning or creating something? I should be improving
my skills right now."

Very frustrating.

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jordanbeiber
Cut yourself some slack! :)

The brain needs it, and who knows, you might get inspired.

I know what you mean though, but I’ve been working hard to just let my brain
rest at times. Games can be useful to turn off or tune down the machinery at
times.

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thih9
> I didn’t embed the video directly to avoid any tracking from Google and
> complications with the DSGVO.

I appreciate this and I wish this behaviour was more popular.

I especially like how it increases awareness of the problem.

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icebraining
But then the laminar flow video was directly embedded - d'oh!

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simonschreibt
Fixed! Thanks for the hint!

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mjurczyk
Both this and your post on ArtStation look absolutely amazing!

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simonschreibt
thank you! :)

