Sniper's Paradise!
Zones, creating Water/Lava (acid or slime)
Water
Water is one of the best looking effects with the Unreal Engine. To make water you simply make a zone, add a WaterZoneInfo, and give the "sheet" a water texture. That's basically it.
To create a pool of water, start by creating a fairly large room 512x512x512 and texture it as you like. To create the water area, resize your brush to 256x256x256 and place the brush at ground level and in the center of the room. Now subtract the brush.
Now let's zone off the area we will be using as water. Create a sheet brush sized 320x320 in the Floor/Ceiling Orientation and position the sheet so that it's about 16 units down from the top of the water zone. (If you place it 32 units down or more players will have trouble getting out of the WaterZone). Make sure that the sheet covers the zone completely so you do not have any holes for the water to leak out or you will fill your entire level with water.
Now load the texture "liquid.utx" and select a water texture you like. Press the "AddSpecialBrush" and select "Water" from the drop down menu then press "Ok" and rebuild the map.
So far we have only done the visual stuff. To add the water itself you will need to open the actor browser. Under "Info" and "ZoneInfo" you will find "WaterZone". Select it and place the "WaterZone" inside the area where the water will be.
Now rebuild the level for the waterZone to take affect and add a playerstart if you would like to test. You can apply this to any size, shape water zone. Just make the area where the water is to be, zone it off, giving a water texture to the surface of the water, add a WaterZoneInfo. That's all there is to it. You can now add effects to the water texture like small wavy or big wavy to give it motion if you like.
Waterfalls
Waterfalls aren't that difficult to create but making them look good takes practice. This brief tutorial will show you the basics on making a waterfall.
Create a 512 x 512 x 512 room and texture it as you like. Now resize the brush to 256 x 256 x 512 and align to the floor as we did the pool. Subtract it and you should have a trench in the floor like below.
Now resize the brush to 768 x 256 x 32. Align it against one wall as shown below, and then subtract it.
Now add a sheet using the sheet tool and special brush to the trench and the cut we made in the wall. You should end up with something like this:
Now add a WaterZoneInfo in the trench. Add lights and a PlayerStart then rebuild to test the map. You can see that the waterfall doesn't look real. To make it look like the water is actually falling we need to set some texture properties. Select the waterfall texture and bring up it's surface properties. First, go to the Scale tab and under Custom Scaling leave the "Texture U" setting alone but change the "Texture V" setting to 8.
Now go to the Effects tab and check V-Pan.
Note: Look at the water fall in the 3D view (making sure the little joystick icon is clicked in that view). Your water fall may appear to be falling "upwards." If this is true then got to the Rotate tab in the surface properties window and click FlipV.
Your water should now be falling towards the ground. You can also set the v-pan effect on the "stream" to make it appear to flow.
Tips
The waterfall we made works, but is not very realistic. First of all the water doesn't come from anywhere in particular and doesn't go anywhere. If we wanted this to appear real, we could make a ledge above for the water to be falling from and make an opening on the opposite wall for the water to be flowing into.
These are the kinds of things you should practice on to make it real. There are several water textures in Unreal. Look around the different .utx files and find ones you like (GenFluid, Liquids, FireEng, HubEffects, etc...). Some work better than others for water falls.
Slime & Lava
Slime and lava are made the exact same way as water but instead of placing a "WaterZone" you must place the correct zoneinfo actor. You will aslo need to load a lava texture like LavaFX or FireEng.
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