Hammer CS:S water does not appear ingame Created 17 years ago2007-08-03 22:11:30 UTC by mungbean34

I am new to mapping and have little knowledge about Source SDK but I will try my best to explain my situation. Plz bear with me.

I have read various tutorials on how to add water to the map. I have tried combining different techniques of these tutorials but still
the only result i get is an invisible brush that only makes simple splashes when shot, or sound effects when walked through but is not visible.

Methods I have tried: Create a brush and apply tools/toolsnodraw to the entire brush, then apply liquids/water_dx70 to the top face only.
Insert entities: water_lod_control & env_cubemap. Place these above the brush and do not let them make contact with the brush. Select brush,
press Ctrl+T and set class to func_water_analog click apply, then double click the env_cubemap entity, select 'Brush faces' (under 'Keyvalues:'), then
click the 'Pick...' button and select the top face of the brush. Click apply. Compile and run map. Once in game type buildcubemaps into the developer
console.

I have tried all these techniques together, using both entities aswell as one of each & none. I've tried without the class changed to func_water_analog.
I've tried putting the brush perfectly into surrounding solid brushes (to create a pool) aswell as on its own. I've tried with brush sitting on ground aswell
as leaving space between ground and brush. I've tried using different water textures. The best result I have got so far is a completely white top surface.
All other results have been an invisible brush.

WHAT AM I MISSING?!

Any information on fixing this problem, or relating to this same problem is awesome!

You don't need to make the water an entity. Just having the dx7 texture on top should be sufficient.
Cubemaps automatically find faces to map so you dont have to manually pick faces for that either. (you can if you want to, it's all up to you)

Have you build the cubemaps in-game yet?
After you compile, open the console and type in buildcubemaps, hit enter and it will do some black screen flash of pictures (building the cubemaps) then will go back to the game.

I've gotten this problem many times before, and i think there's a toggleable value in the console somewhere..

switching it from 1 to 0 and back to 1 a few times should do something. I think that's just with the cubemaps though.
Ill go hunt it down.

You do have a light entity correct?

OR

You might be using one of those weird textures which doesn't appear ingame.
At least there are some for HL2.

Try changing texture

Ok So I've read the two replies which I have got already.
Great, thanks!
I've tried the thing which I have not yet tried which is adding a light entity but still that does not work. I've tried classes 'light_environment' and 'light', but neither create a visible water surface in-game. It's still an invisible brush in-game. I also tried different water textures again.

Btw, when I created a light_environment entity I set brightness value to 600, ambient brightness to 200 and pitch -60, then ran the map and in-game it was completely dark except for windows and a shiney wood texture on some steps which were glowing bright white. Could this be because there is no skybox textures applied?

light_envioment behaves like the sun by casting light from the skybox texture so yes that likely is your problem.

Ahh.. you have yourself a leak.

Solution:

Try making a huge box around your map (and compile fast) and check the water again.
If you can see the water now, then you have a leak.

Remove the box and find the leak.

Or you could just load the pointfile. Which will draw a line, pointing to the leak in Hammer.

@Madcow
If theres a leak it would say in his compile log file.

If water is invisible, there are two causes.
-The water brush isn't set up properly. Either by the way it's been textured or by the textures being used.
-A full VIS was not successfully completed during compile. A leak can cause that, but other reasons (such as the obvious reason of not running VIS, some problems with portals and clusters) can be responsible for that.

I thought he just has a box with water in it?
It's hard to have a leak when it's just a box, no?

The water not appearing might not be because of a leak though.

It's just quite likely that it is a leak.

As Kasperg said, there are a few other things that can cause it too.