Waterfalls

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Alarantalara
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Waterfalls

Post by Alarantalara »

I've been drawing waterfalls to decorate a water filled cave map for a campaign and thought I'd post them for comments and criticism.

I should mention that I have no plans to animate them at this time because of the animated water in the contributions forum and these won't match since they partially overwrite the water, so I'll have to redraw them then for myself anyway.
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waterfalls.png
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artisticdude
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by artisticdude »

I'm not an art contributor, but to me these look awesome. Very impressive work. :)
Alarantalara wrote:I should mention that I have no plans to animate them at this time because of the animated water in the contributions forum and these won't match since they partially overwrite the water, so I'll have to redraw them then for myself anyway.
Perhaps you would consider creating waterfalls for mainline? They would really be a great asset to the game.
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Captain_Wrathbow »

Those are very very good. :D
You ought to animate them.
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Gambit
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Gambit »

See this also... and this one too.
Maybe some of the critique and discussion also applies here, or not. I just thought you'd be interested.
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Blarumyrran »

Gambit wrote:See this also... and this one too.
Maybe some of the critique and discussion also applies here, or not. I just thought you'd be interested.
This looks better than those 2 I'd say
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Issyl
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Issyl »

I would agree that this is a better idea (having waterfalls instead of small trickles), but there needs to be more emphasis on why the water would flow that way.

I think the photo accurately shows what I mean. Think about how water cuts through rock over time, and how waterfalls look compared to the rock around them. Currently, your waterfalls are at the same level as the rocks around it, which doesn't make sense to me - why would the water all fall in that particular place? In your specific examples, for this transition to work, I think the waterfalls need to be lower, and the rocks around the water higher, to emphasize more clearly that that's the way the water should flow.
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small-waterfall-at-petit-jean-mt-linda-womack.jpg
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SFault
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by SFault »

The one going to the down and right is good, but the rest have very sharp edge to the water. They need to have some transition from water to waterfall.
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Alarantalara
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Alarantalara »

I think I've partially addressed the lack of curve at the start of the waterfall as well as appearing to lower the water for the waterfalls flowing right to left. I've also added a new waterfall to the image (and shown how more of the falls layer).

Making the water appear lower turns out to be surprisingly hard given the constraints I have when drawing them. Because I want the waterfalls to be able to overlap, I'm mostly limited to drawing water and not the surrounding rock. In the top left fall, you can see a dark line from the shadow used to make the small split falls look better. It doesn't look too bad, but I need to lighten it so it blends better. I'm currently checking the areas near the edge of the fall to see if I can find darker areas so it looks shadowed and lower.

If people want, I could upload this as an add-on since it's just a set of transitions.
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waterfalls.png
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Alarantalara
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Alarantalara »

Thanks to Gambit I have enormously increased my workload. While I couldn't view the pictures in one of the threads, the other thread combined with not wanting to have to redo things when (if) the animated water appears has resulted in what you see below (one waterfall converted so far).
waterfalls new.png
waterfalls new.png (114.04 KiB) Viewed 5482 times
Since this means that I will not be continuing work on waterfalls for the current mainline shallow water terrain, I've attached my last versions along with a terrain-graphics file to display them as well in case someone wants them.

Also, since this means that I have full control over the water the waterfalls are coming from, I might animate them, though I want to make sure I have good base frames before I start and there are a few other animations for the terrain I want to do first.
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Old Waterfalls.zip
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Sangel
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Sangel »

Alarantalara, this is impressive work. If you do succeed in animating your waterfalls, they would make for an excellent addition to mainline Wesnoth. If you don't mind, I'm going to move this thread to the Art Contributions forum to make sure it gets the attention of the art developers. Let me know if you'd like it moved back for some reason.
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by ancestral »

What does it look like having water spill into… water? (Most waterfalls I've seen don't spill into an abyss…)
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by mortalus »

The water can easily fall into the abyss. I would add some stray reflections but if the abyss is deep enough, there is no need to show what it is falling into (as it would be hidden in darkness).
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Alarantalara
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Alarantalara »

I have been working on improving the impression that the water is constrained by the rock without actually adding my own to preserve the ability to layer the waterfalls on top of each other without interference.

Changes to the ones below:
falls.png
falls.png (102.6 KiB) Viewed 5214 times
1) Added some white edges to make it appear the water is being pushed back on both sides. I can't make the fall wider to avoid the dark area on the left without running into problems with some transitions (like grass) and I like the width of this fall. Any suggestions?

2) Erased a big piece of the upper fall to restore the rock face and make it appear as if the water is falling behind the cliff. Also shrunk the lower fall slightly and moved the water around a bit.

3) Added a second small fall below the main one to solve the question of "Why doesn't it fall there?"

4) I forgot what I did. Added a number anyway in case people want to comment on it.
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Issyl
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Issyl »

I would say you still need a bit more gradual of a transition from water to waterfall. Specifically, I would create more streams of 'whitewater' behind the waterfall, especially where the water would tend to move faster.
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Alarantalara
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Re: Waterfalls

Post by Alarantalara »

There is no need for whitewater before the edge of a waterfall. I don't envision the caves as very steep for the most part, and leaving out the slope makes them work for pools and lakes as well.

And if it's river, check out the following one for a whitewater free river waterfall. I quite like this image and may try to make my falls more like it.
http://www.find-croatia.com/nationalpar ... rfall2.htm
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