since 2014 and even before the community is on a quest to bring weather effects to TrackMania.
I´ve watched videos like the rain animation by Darkpuddle ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0o3m57Jtk0 ) and other kind of attemps to create it.
But in all of these attemps it was always the same result: 2D rain directly on the screen without any depth or changes on the surroundings.
Since i saw such videos i went onto the challenge to create a better effect like those you saw, changing textures by increasing the normal and specular maps for a wet look on textures.
I have finished my yet unreleased "After-Storm Wetlook" mod for valley and it seems for me as the basic to create such as a rain effect.
NO RAIN WITHOUT ANY CHANGE OF THE SURROUNDINGS. Thats what i told myself always. It just doesn´t look right.
So here are some screens of just the mod.
As you see, it reflects light on a surface that got a lot of bumpiness in it.
That was step 1.
For step 2 i thought about the effect of actual reflections on the surface, since it was meant to be wet.
so i got a simple reshade mod and using simple "Reflective Bump Mapping" it is able to get good looking but yet simple ground reflections into the game.
This works just as a gameplay feature. It sadly doesnt show up in the render of a pic or a video. I made screenshots with a 3rd party recording program.
Notice: The effect didnt slowed down the game. I just a lower framerate by 10-5 fps. (And that on highest settings on a map with a lot of trees.)
Here is a comparision of just the mod & the mod with the reflections.
You will notice that the ground gets smoother and creates and even better light reflection.
I presented this reshade in a video were you can see the proof that it is real time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FznjFFcY_1s
Here are some more screens of the mod together with the reflections:
And last but not least for now a really nice picture by Guerro using just the reshade:
So for now thats my current state on the quest to get weather effects into the game.
The next step will be to create actual FX for rain and 3D space of it.
So keep tuned until i update this post.
Hope you all doing well.
Shadow
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