Did the surface of the water start looking bad recently?

moultano

Did the effect max describes here:

https://twitter.com/max_mcguire/status/450133285268496384

get removed recently? The surface of the water is looking much worse than I remember it, both from above where it looks really flat and from below where I feel like I can see way too much through it. When I look at the surface I feel like there's a blue curtain where the fog starts kicking in, and it's a bit of a bummer.

Flayra

There are some known artifacts when you play with Minimal resolution. Try Recommended?

moultano

@Flayra, I think I figured it out. The sky is darker than the water color now, so the discrepancy between the two is more apparent.

Compare these two shots
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1TsY6wCYAA9-tC.jpg:large
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1y26j0hV5LA/maxresdefault.jpg

The first one looks much more realistic just because the water color looks like the sky color, so you don't notice the sky bleeding through as much.

The sky that you see through the water must always look brighter than the water color. Maybe you can do this with something HDR esque, where the sky just gets blown out whenever you go under the surface?

You also need to reflect the skybox more as the water nears the horizon. I mocked up a comparison shot in gimp.


I've added the reflection on the left half of the image. The right half is what it looks like now.

moultano

@Flayra‌

I mucked up an underwater screenshot to show it too. Left is current, right is modified. I brightened everything above the water, and added some of the water color as a gradient from the horizon. The physical cause of this as the surface reflecting the area under the water, which will mostly just be reflecting the water color.