How do I make a Waterfall?

Hi,

I am just wondering how do you make a waterfall. I have these amazing Tropical Islands and I would like to make waterfalls. Is there an object in the content examples game?

Thanks so much for your help! :slight_smile:

This is a very important part in my game. Please Answer if you can.

You should be able to download and check out the FX cave sample project. There are some waterfalls. There are several techniques you can use. The basic approach is to use particle systems with some kind of translucent material.

For a really big Niagra Falls waterfall you probably want to build in an opaque core mesh with more of a or diffused mist look. But the FX cave should be a good start.

I suggest starting from a really solid mesh base with a panning material. Then create a Particle system that features the mesh as one of the emitters - set the spawn rate 0 and lifetime to 0 for the mesh emitter. Once you have that setup you can start adding in particles to help further sell the effect. Image-sequence based water shapes for various purposes will help. The three main elements I focused on for the particles are as follows:

  1. Water droplets/foam bits falling in an arc and set to “velocity facing” with good image sequences.
  2. Vertical splash image sequence at the base of the waterfall set to camera facing. This could also be done with a mesh emitter and animated materials, or a flipbook material controlled via Dynamic parameter in Cascade Mesh Emitter.
  3. A steam like cloud element. This part could potentially also include a rainbow (I haven’t bothered on that front).

Final result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UrTbkkObtg

It should be noted that I spent an extensive amount of time focusing on creating a mesh and material for the water at the base so that there were proper ripples radiating outward. That’s a whole other business though.

Is there anyway you can make a video tutorial conan-thanoz02?

In the Epic Zen Garden there are a few pre-made waterfall meshes and particle effects. You can download it from the launcher.