Tomb Raider Water

Most games render water as a transparent flat plane with some waves drawn on it. A few use animated textures. But very few (AFAIK only the Tomb Raider games) actually try to simulate refraction through a moving surface.

Doe anyone know how this is done? And why other games don’t use it? IMO it looks about 1000% better than simple transparency.


Rui del-Negro
delnegro@netcabo.pt

I couldn’t exactly tell you how it’s done, but the Serious Sam Engine did a very nice job of this.

Check www.gamasutra.com, they had a very nice tutorial on water some month ago.