Parts
- Introduction
- Settings from a practical perspective
- Settings from a theoretical perspective
- Wave generation
- Brushes
- Ramp
- Environment maps
- Wave normal maps
- Pixelated water
Requisites
Map editing tools, such as:
- Ozonex FaF Editor (https://github.com/ozonexo3/FAForeverMapEditor/releases)
or - GPG Editor (https://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?title=Map_Editing_Tools)
On the 30th of September, 2020 the Ozonex editors renders water differently than in the game. Thus it is not representative to what you would see while playing. On the contrary, the GPG editor utilizes the exact same procedures as the game does and is therefore representative. If this is no longer the case when you read this - do notify me and I'll remove this paragraph 
.
Waves
Waves add in a feeling of the environment being alive. It is visible on all default maps that have water of some kind and on custom maps when people know how to generate these. This article is trying to assist the community on the latter.
A bunch of waves on the shores of the map Mellow Shallows
Using the Ozonex editor
On the 30th of September, 2020 the Ozonex editors doesn't support generating waves. On the contrary, the GPG editor has a procedure in place that allows you to generate waves on maps. If this is no longer the case when you read this - do notify me and I'll remove this paragraph .
Using the GPG editor
Navigate to the water layer (F9). In the toolbar of the editor you'll find three little buttons named 'Edit Water Properties', 'Water brush' and 'Water waves'. Choose the latter. This will change the tool window into the Waves window.
Highlighting the actions described earlier in the GPG editor
The new tool window is basic in its nature: you select a wave, choose a depth for them to be generated on and hit generate. Waves will be generated in such a way that they orient to the shore. Slowly but surely the waves will start to spawn. It can take a while for the waves to be visible - some of them have a long animation time including a fade in time.
There isn't a lot of creative freedom in this feature. You can manually select waves but you cannot transform or rotate them. You can delete them. You can delete all the waves by clicking on the reset button.
Guidelines on waves
Generally you want to use multiple types of waves and foam. The longer the animation of the wave the further away from the shore you'd like to generate them. Watch out for waves directly intersecting the terrain - this will create hard lines between the wave and the terrain and it generally looks bad. If this happens, generate the waves at a deeper shore depth. Generating the same type of waves multiple times is not uncommon and can be used to increase the density of the waves.
Personally I like the 'Incomming', 'Incomming2', 'Foam' and the 'Long slow break' waves. I toy around with them on different shore depths, generating one after the other. It is vital to both check how it looks on beaches as checking how it looks near cliffs or reefs of any kind.
Frequently asked Questions (FAQ)
There are no waves defined in the tool window
About you
If you have interesting sources, approaches, opinions or ideas that aren't listed yet but may be valuable to the article: feel free to leave a message down below or contact me on Discord. The idea is to create a bunch of resources to share our knowledge surrounding various fields of development in Supreme Commander.
If you've used this resource for one of your maps feel free to make a post below: I'd love to know about it!