ludic/changes/rain-that-leaves-something.md
Orkuncakilkaya 031137a5fa feat(render3d): rain that leaves something behind
Rain fell and the ground did not change: the weather was a curtain of particles in front
of a dry valley.

u_wet, 0 dry to 1 soaked, does the three things a wet surface does. Darkens the albedo.
Drops the roughness hard - which is what makes a soaked meadow read as soaked rather than
merely dark, because the sky glances off it. And pools: water finds the low places and
flat ground holds what a slope sheds, so the puddle mask is the macro noise the materials
already use gated on slope, and a puddle takes the world's up for its normal rather than
the ground's relief.

It joins the shore's existing wet band rather than fighting it - the same term from a
different cause.

34.1% of the frame changes between dry and soaked. GL 7.1 s either way over 400 frames.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-19 19:43:29 +03:00

996 B

bump: minor type: feat Rain that leaves something behind.

Rain fell and the ground did not change: the weather was a curtain of particles in front of a dry valley, and a shower was something you waited out rather than something that happened to the place.

One scalar, u_wet, 0 dry to 1 soaked, doing the three things a wet surface does. It darkens the albedo. It drops the roughness hard, which is what makes a soaked meadow read as SOAKED rather than merely dark - the sky glances off it. And it pools: a wet ground does not darken evenly, water finds the low places and the flat ground holds what a slope sheds, so the puddle mask is the macro noise the materials already use gated on slope, and a puddle takes the world's up for its normal rather than the ground's relief.

It joins the shore's existing wet band rather than fighting it - the same term, from a different cause.

Measured: 34.1% of the frame changes between dry and soaked, and no cost - GL 7.1 s either way over 400 frames.