Sorta Surf applies an effect that looks a little like breaking surf around the shore line and over any areas of the underwater terrain that rise to within the breaking depth you set. It's not real breaking surf, but it looks sort of like it, which is why the plugin's called Sorta Surf. It can give pretty convincing results.

Click for larger image

The Interface

Mac version	Windows version

Sorta Surf 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.
  

• Breaking Depth
  This setting controls the depth that the surf effect starts appearing at, analogous to the depth waves start breaking at. Any area of the water where the depth is between 0 and the breaking depth will have the surf effect applied. Note that this doesn't just mean the shoreline, but any area where the depth is shallower than than the breaking depth. For example, if there was a piece of terrain offshore that was completely underwater, but which rose so that the water depth was less then the breaking depth, then you would get a patch of surf. Note that this setting uses Terragen units, not metres.
  

• Surf Pattern popup
  There are now 2 patterns you can choose from for the surf. The first pattern is the same as the original one in Sorta Surf, the second one is an improved pattern which I think looks a lot better, although still not ideal perhaps.
  

• Surf Density
  This setting controls the density of the surf effect. Lower numbers will show less surf. Values can range from 0 to 100.

• Frothiness
  This setting controls how frothy the surf looks. With this setting at 0, the surf effect will look flat on the surface of the water. With this setting at 100, the area the surf effect covers will be very frothy.

• Reflectiveness
  This setting allows you to control how reflective the frothy areas ( as set by Frothiness ) of the surf are compared to the reflectiveness of the water ( as set in the Water window ). If the Reflectiveness is set to 100, then the frothy areas are just as reflective as the water. Smaller values will make the frothy areas less reflective relative to the water. Values can range from 0 to 100.

• Surf Colour button
  This button opens the colour picker so you can choose a colour for the surf.

• Use Mask checkbox
  This check box allows you to choose whether or not to use a mask to control where the surf 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 Sorta Surf interprets masks

Sorta Surf recognises the full 256 shades of grey ( from white to black ) when reading a mask that you load from a file. If Sorta Surf encounters a white pixel in the mask, the surf effect is applied at full intensity. If Sorta Surf encounters a black pixel in the mask, then the surf effect is not applied at all. When encounters an intermediate value, the surf effect is scaled back by that value. So if Sorta Surf comes across a medium grey pixel ( a value of 128, or half of the range ) then the surf effect will be scaled back by 50%.

The surf effect is still constrained by the Breaking Depth. Areas of water deeper than the Breaking Depth will not show the surf effect, regardless of the value in the mask, so you do not need to colour the entire area of water where you don't want surf to appear. However, if you would like to exert total control over the surf effect, then you can. To do this you need to paint the entire water area of the mask. You will also need to set the Breaking Depth so that it's much deeper than the maximum depth of the water. This prevents the normal falloff component of the surf effect, which tapers the effect off according to the depth of the water, from coming into play. I'd recommend that you set it at something ridiculous like 20000. Future versions of Sorta Surf will probably feature a checkbox which allows you to disable the normal falloff effect, so that you can easily use a mask to completely control the application of the surf effect.

You can use the Depth Contour setting of the Mask Generator to indicate where the surf effect will be applied for a particular Breaking Depth. To do this, just set the Depth Contour setting to the same value as the Breaking Depth. The area of water that the surf effect covers will be drawn in grey on the mask. However, because Sorta Surf uses all the values of grey in the mask, if you leave that grey area in, the surf effect will be scaled back by 50% across the entire area it covers ! Obviously this isn't very desirable. There are two ways to get around this :

• If you have an image editor that supports layers :
  Open or import the mask. Copy the mask onto a new layer. Go back to the bottom layer and use the paint bucket tool to fill the grey areas with white. Use this bottom layer to draw the mask. If you need to refer to the layer showing the grey depth contour areas, make the layer that you copied 50% transparent or similar. You should now be able to continue working on the bottom layer and also be able to see where the surf effect extends to. When it comes time to save the image as a BMP again, delete the top layer.
  

• If your image editor doesn't support layers :
  This is a bit trickier. The best solution is probably to open or import the mask file into two seperate windows. Use the paint bucket tool to delete fill the grey areas in one window with white, and use this image to draw the areas you want masked, keeping the other window around to refer to.
  

Tips for using Sorta Surf

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

• Generally, Sorta Surf should be the last plugin applied during the rendering process. This means it should be the lowest plugin in the list. It might help to think of the plugin list as being an upside down stack. By having Sorta Surf as the last plugin in the list, it will be applied directly to the surface of the water, over the top of the effects of the other plugins, much as real surf.
• If you find you have a stray piece of surf where you don't want it, in the middle of a lake perhaps, you can use Terragen's sculpting tools to lower the terrain in the area. If you lower it so that the water above it is deeper than the breaking depth, the surf won't show up anymore.
• For much finer control over where the surf effect appears, you can use the Mask Generator plugin to create a mask which you can edit in a paint program ( such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or GraphicConverter ). For example, of you had a lake and you wanted surf to show up on only one side of it, you could make a mask and edit it so that the surf only appeared on the shore you wanted it to.

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