In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a very basic waterfall in Crytek's Sandbox 2, starting from constructing the basic terrain to accomodate the feature to adding the water particle effects themselves. Bare in mind that the product of this tutorial is purely a basic waterfall built in a test level, and no reflection of what can be achieved with time and effort.
To start off, create the terrain that you require for your desired waterfall effect. In essence, this will require two areas of land at different heights. In these two areas you will need two river beds, one for the water to flow from and one for the water to fall into and flow away. In this tutorial the Flatten tool has been used (RollupBar > Terrain > Modify > Flatten) with its height set to 100 to build a raised platform.
Ultimately, although every waterfall is different, your terrain should resemble in essence the picture below. Use a combination of the Rise and Lower tools (shown on the right), and use the smooth and flatten tool to help shape your terrain better. Effectively, it’s your choice what height and shape your terrain is. You could also use the Road/River tool to shape your terrain as well, as it’s certainly much faster than conventional methods and is also quite efficient. Then you could use the Rise/Lower tools afterwards to hone your terrain. It’s entirely up to you!
To start with, we are going to create the upstream river at the top of the waterfall. Browse to RollupBar > The "Create" Tab > Misc > River' and the X,Y and Z axis marker should appear under your cursor. Make sure Align To Terrain is on (or press Ctrl + 1) so you dont place the points under the terrain, and start drawing your river. Click to place the various points, and double click to finish (if you're not happy with it, press Edit in the parameters to click-drag the points around). Now you need to assign a material and the parameters to the river. To give you an example, a screenshot has been included below showing the material layer and the river parameters used for the river pictured below. Just in case you are interested, the texture used for the river bed was Materials/terrain/river_rocks.
The width is set to a large number purely because sometimes the terrain doesn't accomodate accurate river widths, so the wider river means that no gaps will be left without any river material. The same rule applies to the depth of your river; you don't want to be able to swim down in your river to find that you fall out of the river and onto your river bed terrain. The only reason the speed is at -4 was because when the river speed was set to a positive number, the river was taking the player upstream when you jumped in. Normally, the river speed should be set to a normal positive "4".
Also, if you want to create real-time reflections and foam effects in the river, then go to the Material Editor (View > Open View Pane > Material Editor) and find the material you applied to your river. Then scroll down and open up the Shader Generation Parameters. In there, tick the options you require. Also changeable in the Material Editor are the Shader Parameters which control a number of modifiers regarding the material layer. In here you can modify a number of factors that affect your river, namely how fast the river is flowing. This doesn't modify the actual speed of the river, but how fast the river appears to be flowing. Have a play around with these and you can create a very good and convincing looking river.
Now it’s time to place the rocks for your waterfall. Rocks are very important when making your waterfall, as they provide the barrier between river and waterfall, and also can make or break the aesthetics. Shown below is a sample vegetation category, in which are placed suitable rocks for your waterfall. However, if you decide you want different rocks in your waterfall, again that’s perfectly fine; it's your waterfall! As well as the vegetation being used, the parameters for them have been included as well, shown on the screenshot below. Make sure that the UseSprites option further down the parameters is unchecked as well.
Using a variety of these rocks lined up at the end of the river, the top of the waterfall was created. You should aim to produce something like this. It needs to cover the entirety of the end of the river (which looks glaringly obvious when not covered up), but still look natural. Also remember when placing to keep randomly rotating and resizing the rocks. (To resize, hold down Alt + Left Mouse Button and then drag up and down, and to rotate, hold down Ctrl + Alt + Left Mouse Button, and then drag up and down). This will not only make your rocks look more naturally placed, but will help hide the end of the river better.
Now you should aim on trying to make the rocks on the outside of the waterfall; these rocks will be the ones that won’t have any water falling on them. We’ll get on to the rocks where water will actually be falling later. This is a long process, unique to each person, so there’s no real way that you can be guided through rock placement step by step. Refer to pictures of this example waterfall or of other waterfalls you want to mimic to exactly recreate the rock formation you want.
Remember to use the parameters suggested earlier, or something very similar. In this picture bushes were also added (the vegetation objects are shown below, while using the same parameters as the rocks) to try and create a nice looking waterfall area alive with nature. In later pictures trees and smaller rocks etc. have been added, basically more nature along the river banks to make the river look more realistic.
Now it's time to add the rocks in main section of the waterfall. For this, we are going to copy the same vegetation category that the dry rocks use, but make a few differences. Firstly, as shown in the picture below, you need to keep the same parameters as the old rocks except for one parameter; the surface layers.
You need to check that Layer_Wet is ticked; this gives the rocks the running water flow look as shown on the rock to the right. This option can be found right at the bottom of the vegetation parameters shown earlier on in the tutorial. This can greatly enhance the effect of any object that exists underneath the waterfall. Once you’ve populated the central section of your waterfall, you should have something resembling the picture below.
In this section we're going to finish off the waterfall. This will be done by adding the the actual water particles that create the flowing effect, as well as adding a river downstream of the fall to complete the fluvial system.
Now it's time to add the river at the bottom of your waterfall. What you really need to have is a long stretch of terrain at a sloping gradient, but a smooth sloping gradient.
What that means is that you should craft your terrain so it's a long, straight yet sloping line rather than a stretch of terrain with fluctuating angles. It should look something like the picture below. Don’t worry about
bumps in the terrain (in fact these are encouraged, it gives a very realistic feel to river beds, as effects like that, known as braiding, are a commonly occurring feature in real life rivers), but make sure that the
general gradient of the slope is constant all the way down.
When you create your river, there are a number of things you need to remember. Firstly, that you can’t use the same material layer for your river as you did for the first one, otherwise the river speed will look the same
(changes in materials apply across any entity you apply it to). This isn’t what you want, as downhill rivers are obviously going to be a lot faster than one with a very gently sloping gradient.
In the first river, you used the material Ocean/river_village. For this river, apply the exact same parameters as the first except use Ocean/river_sphere as the material. The material is almost exactly the same.
Then, in the material editor, scroll downwards to the “Shader Params” section. In there, you can adjust the speed at which the river seems to flow. Set it to the maximum (4), and make sure its travelling
the right way. If not, then use -4 as the value. Also, leave room for vegetation such as bushes and rocks, i.e. leave a small bank on the side of the river. On the right of the page are two pictures,
one with the just the river and another with lots of vegetation placed along the banks. You’ll see the look I’m going for immediately.
Now, once you’ve got your river sorted, it’s time to add the waterfall itself! For the sake of simplicity here, we are going to use two particle effects only to make our waterfall. These are;
To access these, go to View > Open View Pane > Database View. Go to the particles section (make sure you have them loaded, otherwise you’ll see a blank space), and finally scroll to water.river_waterfall. Place the larger effect (the one named medium nighttime) on top of the larger rocks that spill from the top of the waterfall, to simulate water crashing onto the rocks. Place as many of these as you feel necessary, and play with the scale in the parameters if you want smaller or larger effects. This was done in the example, and it ended up with a waterfall looking like this.
Then place the ripple particle effect at the bottom just on the surface of the water. Again, the amount that you add varies on what your waterfall will look like, but here’s the rough example.
Lots of other particle effects exist in the river waterfall folder, so have a look round and find others that you think may suit your waterfall. You can see below what a very basic finished result cna look like.
