ETHEREAL WATER EFFECT TUTORIAL

First off, to understand exactly how this effect is done you have to know a bit about the objects that make up the final result. This effect is made of three animating objects (Animating1) and (Animating2) as well as a (Animating3) which acts as the splash effect. Waterfall Mist is also used.

The basic idea is very simple. The animating 1&2 objects are made up of a mesh that moves down vertically in an animation and then jumps back up and starts over. This gives the look of water/spirtual energy flowing downward. Each animating object flows down at a different rate. Later on I will explain why. You must understand that because this effect is a "cheating" way to simulate flowing you will have to overshoot your flow one extra placement upwards. It is a bit hard to explain, but if you look at the red arrow below, you can see it points to a column.. hidden inside that column is the first two animating objects that flow down. The reason you must do this is because the animating object needs a buffer to start from and an area to hide the fact that the mesh is moving down,and then popping back up again. If you don't do this, you'll not get the right effect(it'll actually look horrible).

Below you can see I list how many animating objects it takes to create a flow seen in my level. There are 3 Animating1s and Animating2s stacked ontop of eachother. Then you must place them over eachother, like seen below in the next picture..

The reason why the animatings flow at different speeds and are placed over one another is because by doing that, you see two seperate layers of flow at different speeds simulating a more realistic and eye catching effect.(plus it looks awesome!)

After all is said and done, the effect itself is a pretty neat result. Don't forget you must activate the animating objects (the animating3 too, it rotates). If you don't.. they simply won't flow. The animating3 is placed at the bottom of the flow and acts as a splash effect for the water/spiritual flow hitting the pool.. and then 4 waterfall mist objects are placed to futher polish off the effect.

This effect can also be easily converted into different flowing liquids. Spiritual energy, water, lava, poison sludge.. with just a bit of editing and texture changes the idea can easily be expanded upon.

I believe I covered all the bases! If you have any questions or can't understand the effect you can email me at leongaignun@hotmail.com and I will try to help you out.

--Lath