Lava gives a lava like effect to the water. It completely alters the water, changing both the structure and the colouring. You have control over the colouring, as well as the lumpiness and roughness of the resulting lava surface. This is one of the cheesier effects in WaterWorks, but it can give some interesting, and not too terrible looking, results.

Click for larger image

The Interface

Mac version	Windows version

Lava is easy to use. Here's a guide to it's settings :

• File Menu
  The File menu allows you to open and save your plugin settings. The settings are saved in files with a .wwk extension. All of the different plugins save their settings in files with a .wwk extension, but each has it's own format. If you try and open a .wwk file that was saved by a different plugin, then you will be notified about it.
  

  All of the commands in the File menu should work pretty much as you expect them to, however there is a File Menu page here if you would like it explained.
  

  WaterWorks settings files are cross platform, and can be exchanged between the Mac and Windows versions.
  

  Please note that mask information is not currently saved in the settings file.
  

• Preview group box
  The Preview group box contains controls relating to the effect preview. As you can see, there is a graphic preview of the lava effect. Here's what the other controls in the group box do :
  
  • Realtime checkbox
    The Realtime checkbox controls whether the preview updates as you change the settings. As having the preview update as you change the settings can make things a little sluggish, you can choose to turn this off. When you do, the preview changes so it updates progressively. When you change the settings the preview redraws in a blocky low quality mode and then redraws in a high quality mode over time. The low quality mode is enough to give you a reasonable idea of the effect.
    

  • Update button
    The Update button makes the preview immediately update in high quality mode.
    

• Colour settings
  These settings allow you to control the colouring of the Lava. The colouring for Lava is basically a black - red - yellow gradient. These settings allow you to adjust the influence each component has over the final gradient, using percentages. As you can seem there is a preview of the gradient at the top. Here's a rundown on each of the colour component settings :
  • Black Bias
  
  This setting controls the amount of black in the gradient. With this setting at 1, the minimum, there will be only a very small amount of black on the very highest parts of the lava. With this setting at 100, the maximum, the entire lava surface will be black.
  • Red Bias
  
  This setting controls the distribution of colours in the area of the gradient between the area covered by the black and the yellow end of the gradient. For example, if the Black Bias is set to 30, then 70% of the gradient will be available for the other colours. If the Red Bias is set to 50, then the reddest part of the gradient will be at 65% of the length along the gradient. The reason for this is that half of the space for other colours, 70, is 35, and 35 plus the Black Bias setting of 30 is 65.
  • Yellow Bias
  
  This setting controls the yellow value at the end of the gradient. If this value is 1, the minimum, then the colour will effectively be red. If this value is 100, the maximum, then the colour will be pure yellow ( 100% red, 100% green, 0% blue, for those who have an RGB colour slider in their head ). Intermediate values will give varying shades of orange, from reddy orange at a setting of about 25, to orange at a setting of 50, to yellowy orange at a setting of 75.

  It's possible the future versions of Lava will allow you to select a grey value for the start of the gradient, fading between the grey colour and black, to give a little more definition to the black areas of the lava surface.

• Roughness
  This setting controls the vertical scaling of the lava surface. If you used a setting of 0, the minimum, you would get a completely flat surface. If you used setting of 100, the maximum, you would get a much rougher surface.

• Lumpiness
  This settings controls how lumpy or bumpy the surface is. A setting of 0, the minimum, would give a surface that was very smooth and pillowy, for want of a better term. A setting of 100, the maximum, would give a surface that had a much more jagged or noisy appearance.

• Reflectiveness
  This setting allows you to control the reflectiveness of the lava independently of the reflectiveness of the water. The default is 0, which means that the lava isn't reflective at all. In some situations it may be beneficial to have a slight amount of reflectivity though, as it can help to bring out a the detail in the lava surface. The downside is that you may get white speckles on the surface, especially if you are looking at an area the sun is directly shining on. It can take a bit of fiddling to get a Reflectiveness setting that brings out a bit of detail without too many white speckles. A setting of 0 will prevent any speckles appearing. Values range from 0 to 100.

• Use Mask checkbox
  This check box allows you to choose whether or not to use a mask to control where the lava effect appears. You can generate masks using the Mask Generator plugin.

• Mask Settings button
  Clicking on this button will bring up the Mask Settings dialog box, which allows you to select a mask file to use. See the Mask Settings page for more information.

• Cancel button
  This button closes the plugin window without recording the changes you've made to the settings.

• OK button
  This button closes the plugin window and records the changes you've made to the settings.

How Lava interprets masks

When reading a mask loaded from a file, if Lava encounters a black pixel, then the lava effect is not applied. If Lava encounters a white pixel, or any other colour, the effect is applied. If, for example, you wanted to prevent the lava effect from appearing in a certain area, you would draw on the mask in black, and when it came time to render, the water would show through instead of lava in that area.

Tips for using Lava

Here are some hints and tips to help you get the most out of Lava :

• To get a really hot looking lava effect, you can try using a red or yellow version of the "Weird Blue Glow" technique, first discovered by Tim O'Donoghue. He has a tutorial you can see here. Here's one I prepared earlier, click on the image to see a bigger version.

Requirements

WaterWorks needs the TGPGuiLib to run. This file provides cross platform interface functionality. To find out more about the TGPGuiLib and download the latest version, visit it's website.

© Jo Meder 2000, all rights reserved