Waves, tides, and ripples

Scirra recently tweeted a link to a particle effects demo at scirra.com/labs/particlesdemo2

The smoke trails, explosions, and water splashes (while nicely executed) are all fairly standard particle effects.

However, what I'm curious to know is the method used to create "tidal waves" - the rippling across the surface of the water from a point of impact.

Does anyone either know, or have some suggestions about how they would go about doing this? It seems to be a fairly simple sine curve distortion, but I wasn't sure how to apply this to an object...?

Thanks for any advice!

I'm working on producing realistic webgl water atm. The lens shader will do what you're saying to the distortion, it will just depend on how you draw the sprite it's applied to and how you manipulate magnification, scale etc throughout its lifespan.

is this any good for you to start from ?

sine wave

click on the line to see effect

Thankyou both for the suggestions.

RamPackWobble - yes, I had attempted something like that, although per-sprite sine behaviour on 60 individual sprites seems very expensive, and also I couldn't work out how to "fill" below the line. Any ideas?

Tommyttk - I'll give lens shader a try and see how I get on - will post back here if I get anywhere!

Rojo's canvas plug would work nicely except for the webgl thing.

Just draw a spline along the x axis, and give the control points random(-5,5) integers that you lerp out over time.

I guess to fill below you could use tall thin sprites ? (maybe fading from blue to black ?)

probably overkill on the number of sprites - I don't think it would bother a desktop but might bring a tablet to it's knees ?

I like the sound of using a gl shader but , unfortunately, know nothing about them   <img src="smileys/smiley9.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I am interested to to see how this goes - good luck.

another approach <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle">

silly but just maybe...

Silly perhaps, but I think you might be onto something - I suspect the answer might well lie in some black magic trickery such as this :)

Maybe someone clever than me can make this better but I was thinking you could use the polygon plugin to draw the water and then animate the vertexes. I did look at using curved vertexes but couldn't see how or if possible.

Sure you could make this smooth with better use of lerp, functions, delays etc..

Demo

Capx

well i gave it a shot, and i think this is how they did it ;)

hope this helps, pretty much eyecandy , unless it can somehow be used for...something interactive,

just click anywhere in the scene to make a box drop

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22979766/ripplesC.capx

Any suggestions on waves / ripples effect for top-down view ? Or any way to make "Water" effect smaller? since now it fills the entire screen. I just need to add this effect on a smaller objects and need it to look like from a high altitude. Any help appreciated!

Pawprint, can you reupload the capx file...i can't download it

Pawprint, can you reupload the capx file...i can't download it

If you look at his profile, the user you are asking to upload hasn't been on the forum in 2 years..

aww man, oh well...since you're here LittleStain, i want to ask, in the scirra.com/labs/particlesdemo2 how did they make the particles go from big to small when the rock hits the gorund? did they your litetween?

I'm guessing they just use a negative growrate in the properties..