Half-Life Alyx Update - The Booze Shader

warning this video contains footage of half-life Alex rather unsurprisingly since its release half-life Alex has continued to get updates up until now it's been about fixing bugs and adding accessibility options but today's V one point four adds liquid to bottles Matthieu wild visual effects developer at valve tweeted about it earlier today claiming that this booze shader had been his lockdown hobby that it required lots of research yeah sure they're saying that it probably did because the result is awesome and when I say that I mean it's on par with messing about with the physics in half-life 2 for the first time or the trees in crisis it's the sort of cool new tech that's so cool you don't care how uncool it makes you look I proudly admit to spending a large part of today slovak squatting hunched over mouth open staring at virtual bottles with a fascination of a monkey it's just such a neat feature and the effect holds up regardless of the angle or how close you get to it I don't think the interiors of these bottles are physically rendered what you're seeing here is some kind of shade of based illusion apply to the outside of the bottle it's hard to know for sure though because the effect looks too good for that but you can see here that this kind of bottle ends at the bottom of the neck and shoving my head through this bottle full of liquid it seems empty on the inside so given these limitations this booze shader looks better than it has any right to it isn't just about getting the physics right though but also the bubbles the refraction and the shine and it gets all that perfect as well setting an impossible bar for other games to follow being the shape these bottles are I couldn't ruin the effect by getting liquid to pass through solid surfaces liquid doesn't magically pass through the neck though I wonder if that's because they're all strategically half-filled or more further testing is required starting from the beginning of the game it quickly becomes apparent that not all bottles contain liquid there was one here but I messed it up when you think about it it makes sense that most are empty it would leave a full drink lying around sometimes you do get lucky but nine times out of ten is piss in game it wasn't until I reached this place that I found some full bottles he would leave so much booze unattended like this it's just asking for some weirdo to come along and to start analyzing the physics so you have varying amounts of liquid in various colors but they also contain different levels of bubbliness the best is this one here shake it hard enough and the whole thing gets filled with foam which gradually settles down until it returns to its usual liquid slightly bubbly south it looks like foam it looks like an ocean of bubbles racing to the surface it's hard to get a good enough look at the effect to spot the flaws since the bottle itself masks the liquid with its coating of dirt scratches and stickers I don't know if this was intentional but the stronger stuff has that slightly greasy look to the bubbles much like real alcohol does it's a super authentic effect and the bubbles and surface hold up from every conceivable angle I could think of they refract the background and you're just kind of to take my word for this but viewed in 3d it appears even more convincing in some places it didn't feel like it was lit brightly enough by the Sun passing through it but get it just rights like in this sunny spot here and it looks marvelous shadows of stuff directly cast across the bottle which itself is mightily impressive though it didn't react to me passing an object in front of it like this and the shadows a bit grainy terrible I booted up a fan-made map with changeable gravity and this was where the effect fell apart when the gravity changes it doesn't smoothly transition it jumps between them in a glass half empty suddenly becomes half full I guess once that transitions happened and the gravity's reversed it's equally authentic upside down but my brain just couldn't process where the liquid and bubbles were supposed to be or which way they were trying to travel since I guess I've never encountered something like this in real life disable the gravity and the whole thing panics and doesn't know what to do with itself but I can't blame it since I'd probably did the same I did try analysing it more but the gravity went horribly wrong and I started having to fight against everyday household furniture valve please fix so yeah a lot of fun to mess around with I'll end with a few more clips for those of you who are interested these large water containers are the worst example of the water shader perhaps they're just too big to get away with the limitations of the effect as it seems more like a thick gas than it is a liquid I just couldn't get a good look at it no matter how hard I tried sometimes marks from one side of the container seem to project across to the other which was cool unless it was just the Bucky shadow in which case it isn't but the water itself isn't worth mentioning and shooting it doesn't cause it to leak let's get back to the pretty examples again having had a very similar bottle before I can vouch for this one's authenticity there isn't another game that comes close to this level of detail just yet [Music] and lastly a long clip showing me shaking up a bottle and then waiting for it to settle again well done Matthew your lockdown was well spent [Music] [Music]

Channel: 2kliksphilip

Views: 649,975

Keywords: Incredible Half-Life Alyx, Half-Life Alyx, update, booze shader

Id: 8kQW2jFPYZo

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020