Triton 2.63 now includes a volumetric deferred decal system – this means you can now place arbitrary textures over the moving water surface at any given location. Whether it’s beds of kelp, debris, oil slicks, or whatever else you can dream up, your texture will conform precisely to the water surface, no matter how rough the conditions.

Applying decal textures to dynamic geometry like our ocean waves is a tough problem, but after a good amount of perseverance we’ve rolled out an easy to use system with minimal performance overhead.

Using decals is easy. Just use the new Triton::Ocean::AddDecal() method to place your texture on the ocean at a given location with a given size. For simple animation effects, the Ocean::ScaleDecal() and Ocean::SetDecalAlpha() methods may be used to adjust the size and transparency of the decal at runtime. When you’re done, clean it up with Ocean::RemoveDecal().

We’re already putting this new technology to use with an improved rotor wash effect. Helicopter rotor wash over water now includes animated decal textures to provide more visual detail to the effect, in addition to the 3D waves, spray, and foam the effect used before. You’ll find a new parameter on the Triton::RotorWash constructor for “useDecals” – set this to true to enable the decal texture effect on rotor wash. It is false by default, so you will need to update your integrations to take advantage of this new effect.