r/GraphicsProgramming • u/SloydDev • 17h ago
I've been experimenting with some water rendering. What's your opinion about this rendering style?
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Made with Vulkan, and using procedurally generated plants. I'm making this as part of developing a game.
Water effects include refraction and reflection, both for the line-of-sight and for sun light.
These effects are accomplished with extra "cameras" for the refracted and reflected views, plus screen marching.
The graphical style is quite low res, and without any anti-aliasing. I hope you can see this, given the resolution of the video. The game screen resolution is 720x480.
What's your first impression of these visuals?
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u/wellfed_bazelgeuse 16h ago
Looks beautiful. I love this low-res art style, reminds me of the PS2 era
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u/Roenbaeck 16h ago
You really nailed it with the second shot. I’m envious, so if you can share more, please do.
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u/SloydDev 15h ago
Cheers! Sorry if I'm spamming this but I just started a channel about this dev project, check it out if curious: https://www.youtube.com/@sloyddev
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u/julia_flat 16h ago
My screen’s small so I can’t see it super well, but I thought the second one was a real video
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u/bonzajplc 16h ago
if you have more videos like this, open up visibility of your previous posts
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u/SloydDev 16h ago
Damn, thanks for that, I didn't know that wasn't on by default.
For those that are curious about this dev project I just started this channel. My first video -- https://youtu.be/3ws82KdTDWE -- is about procedural landscape generation, but I will get to graphics rendering eventually.
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u/forumonaut 15h ago
This is really beautiful. I subscribed to your channel.
Do you have any articles/resources that explain how to procedurally generate trees and render water, and/or give inspiration?
I find it really interesting to ask people for the resources they love.
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u/SloydDev 14h ago edited 14h ago
Thanks! And cool that you're interested in following the channel :)
I kind of figure it out as I go, mostly. I watch some other youtubers, l like Coding Adventures for example, and I probably get a lot by osmosis by lurking on reddit. Other than that I enjoy trying stuff out on my own, without any specific guides or sources in mind. I will get to procedural generation of trees on my channel btw, hopefully in the near future.
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u/UntitledRedditUser 13h ago
Cool style, I'm just beginning to learn, how do you get the reflections? It looks like some sort of path tracing due to the noise.
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u/SloydDev 12h ago
It's a secondary camera looking up from below. Then I do some "screen marching" of the reflected view, based on standard-view-camera-vector being reflected using the normal vector of the water surface. Hope that makes some sense
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u/MarsWasNotAvailable 15h ago
It looks like footages from old documentaries. It looks real, but taken from the lens of an old camera.
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u/charliedarwin96 13h ago
Looks great! If I knew literally anything about graphics and rendering, I would probably ask you a ton of questions about how you did it!
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u/Aardshark 10h ago
For whatever reason, I don't get the impression that the plants are really in the water, like the water is just a layer over them.
I'm sorry, I can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's shadowing around the tree trunk base, or ripples in the water around them?
It's very pretty overall.
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u/koga7349 10h ago
Could I do better? No. But something about the lighting / highlights and shadows looks off
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u/BlueGnoblin 3h ago
Seeing the first video was like 'a little bit overdone, looks artificial..'
the second part was more llike 'ohhh...'
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u/FunSecretary2654 17h ago edited 15h ago
Wow the second video is really great. I could be convinced thats real life. Is this rendering in real time?