Animated UVs

#1

Lets say I have water that will run down a ditch. Would it be best to place an animated UV texture on a plane and use that? Or, would it be faster to just keyframe a plane that is moving, with a static texture on it in a kind of loop?

#2

Animated UVs are better, but more costly in terms of performance and storage. That’s up to your engine and platform I guess, but in my experience the difference isn’t all that great.

Animated UVs also allow you to bend the river flow, which is nice. And they work with non-planar areas in your level. And you can mask off the edges where it meets the shore, for a better transition, etc.

Anyhow, my 2 cents.

#3

The best water textures I’ve seen were in Unreal Tournament… where you are on the old ship on the bottom level and see a few water puddles (moving) on the floor.

I think they MUST have used an animated .avi file for that. If you come across any good animated water textures gandalf, let me know.

#4

If I recall correctly, they used procedural textures, not pre-rendered movies. Open up the editor that comes with the game, and you’ll be able to see all the cool little procedural-animated goodies. Some really cool stuff.

You’ve probably already seen this posted around, but if you haven’t…
Caustics generator

If you plan on using pre-rendered animated textures, I have a couple quickie tutorials about how to loop and tile procedurals in 3ds max. Might help…
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/looping_a_procedural_texture.html
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/tiling_an_animated_texture.html

#5

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