talk: liquid shader syntax design #261
Description
This is the historic XreaL liquid shader design:
textures/test-water_custom/water
{
qer_editorImage textures/test-water_custom_src/water_d
qer_trans .6
surfaceparm nobuild
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm water
surfaceparm nonsolid
{
stage liquidMap
map textures/test-water_custom_src/water_n
scroll time * .1, time * .1
scale .5, .5
refractionIndex 1.3
fresnelPower 2
fresnelScale .85
fresnelBias .05
}
}There is problems with that design: there is no fallback if liquidMapping is disabled, and we can't feed diffusemap to tint with colors, and we can't feed material map that may tweak reflectance.
My proposition is that:
textures/test-water_custom/water
{
qer_editorImage textures/test-water_custom_src/water_d
qer_trans .6
surfaceparm nobuild
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm water
surfaceparm nonsolid
{
<keyword> liquidMap
diffuseMap textures/test-water_custom_src/water_d
normalHeightMap textures/test-water_custom_src/water_nh
physicalMap textures/test-water_custom_src/water_orm
scroll time * .1, time * .1
scale .5, .5
refractionIndex 1.3
fresnelPower 2
fresnelScale .85
fresnelBias .05
}
}If liquidMapping is disabled, the code would fallback to lightmapping shader instead (which does not look bad when using normal maps etc.). It would be better to merge liquid shader with lightmapping shader to achieves this.