Putting Water Into Your Maps

 

Water is an often overlooked part of mapping, mainly when it comes to cs maps.

When used properly water makes maps look that bit better.

First of all you need somewhere to put water, maybe a pit or a lake. I chose to have a small dip in a corridor and put the water there. Choose whatever you want. Here's what I had:

Right to put water in there we need to drag a box that will fill it completely, don't worry about it overlapping. Once you have done that go in to the texture browser and type ! and this will bring up many water textures. I chose a nice blue one:

Now your water should fill the hole, but remember, don't make it higher then the edge. Will look crazy.

Ok I had this so far:

 

Now to make it actually like a liquid you must then make it into an entity. Select the block and click the ToEntity button, or press CTRL+T.

Choose FUNC_WATER from the list and you will be presented with this menu:

The important ones here are RENDER MODE and FX AMOUNT. If you want the water to stay opaque then leave it. However if you want the water to be transparent then set the RENDER MODE to TEXTURE and set the FX AMOUNT to about 100. (0 is transparent and 255 is opaque, I set mine to 80)

Here we see what type of water you want, for most cs maps you will want water so leave it as that.

Also WAVE HEIGHT sets how high the ripples are. The default is 3.2 and that is quite high. Experiment with that.

Once you have done that you should be able to go into the water and swim and look cool!

Look it's see-through!

Good work, Remember water can really add to your map, just don't over-use it.

 

By Blink