Source Engine water Blur effect possible?

[Crypt]

Hi, I’m working on a small MOD, and there’s one thing I was wondering, how hard would it be to add a blur, so that when you’re under water everything is blurred? Would it be possible? I don’t mind having to code it in, but I don’t understand much C++, so I’d need someone to tell me what I’d need to do/change/add, if it’s even possible. Thanks ahead.

[JeffMOD]

It should be possible, and I’m a bit miffed that Valve not only hasn’t put that in, but also took out the underwater ambient sound in the HL2 '09 update.

I dunno what you’d need, but I expect it would be as simple as coding it to overlay a blur & refract shader on the screen when the player goes underwater. (refract because your vision is also distorted underwater) How to make the shader, I dunno, but the Valve wiki probably has a tutorial somewhere.

[Crypt]

Well, I’ve looked around on the wiki and havn’t found anything. I’ll keep looking into it though. Thanks for the help.

[pfannkuchen_gesicht]

you have to check the water level of the player and add a screenoverlay if the waterlevel is 3

GetWaterLevel();

[JeffMOD]

This page MAY help find how to make the shader, I dunno.

[pfannkuchen_gesicht]

he doesn’t need a new shader.
add this to void C_BasePlayer::CreateWaterEffects( void )

	if ( GetWaterLevel() < 3 )
	{
		view->SetScreenOverlayMaterial( NULL );
		m_bResampleWaterSurface = true;
		return;
	}
	
	IMaterial *pOverlay = materials->FindMaterial("effects/wateroverlay", TEXTURE_GROUP_CLIENT_EFFECTS, false);
	if(!IsErrorMaterial(pOverlay))
	{
		view->SetScreenOverlayMaterial(pOverlay);
	}

wateroverlay is your material which blurs the image
something like this:

"Refract"
{
	"$normalmap" "dev/water_normal"
	"$dudvmap" "dev/water_dudv"
	"$refractamount" 0.05
	"$bluramount" 1.6

	"Proxies"
	{
		"AnimatedTexture"
		{
			"animatedtexturevar" "$normalmap"
			"animatedtextureframenumvar" "$bumpframe"
			"animatedtextureframerate" 30.00
		}
	}
}

[Crypt]

And where do I check the “water level”, and where do I change/add all this code? It looks like the last one is in the .vmt, but I have no idea for the others. Thanks for the help.

[pfannkuchen_gesicht]

at line 1127 in c_baseplayer.cpp(clientside) in the function
void C_BasePlayer::CreateWaterEffects( void )
find

	if ( GetWaterLevel() < 3 )
	{
		m_bResampleWaterSurface = true;
		return;
	}

and replace it with

	if ( GetWaterLevel() < 3 )
	{
		view->SetScreenOverlayMaterial( NULL );
		m_bResampleWaterSurface = true;
		return;
	}
	
	IMaterial *pOverlay = materials->FindMaterial("effects/wateroverlay", TEXTURE_GROUP_CLIENT_EFFECTS, false);
	if(!IsErrorMaterial(pOverlay))
	{
		view->SetScreenOverlayMaterial(pOverlay);
	}

Note: the function you change is already responsible for water effects, in that function you can add any effect, which should be only active when in water

but that’s just a simple unoptimized solution, you better move the

IMaterial *pOverlay

into the declaration of C_BasePlayer as public and initialize it in the spawn() function

class C_BasePlayer : public C_BaseCombatCharacter
{
public:
...
IMaterial *pOverlay;
...
};

void C_BasePlayer::Spawn( void )
{
...
pOverlay = materials->FindMaterial("effects/wateroverlay", TEXTURE_GROUP_CLIENT_EFFECTS, false);
...
}