Legacy Water Planes

⚠️ This is the legacy manual process for FS22 or users who prefer manual control

For Farming Simulator 25, Maps4FS now automatically generates ready-to-use i3d files! See the new automated Water Planes guide instead.

Use this guide only if:

• You're creating maps for Farming Simulator 22

• You prefer manual control over the process

• You need custom quality settings not available in automation

How to create water planes

📹 Check out the video version of this tutorial.

The generator automatically generates the obj files for the water planes, but you need to process them in both Blender and Giants Editor for them to display correctly in the game.

1. Find the obj file in the water directory.

2. Import the obj file into Blender.

Import obj file in Blender

1. Ensure the imported object is selected, right-click anywhere and select Set Origin → Origin to Geometry.

Set origin to geometry

1. Press the N key to open the Transform panel and set the Location to 0, 0, 0 and Rotation to 0, 0, 0. DO NOT TOUCH SCALE AND DIMENSIONS!

Set location and rotation

1. Add an empty material to the object.

Add empty material

1. Change the emission color to fully black.

Emission

Black emission

1. Apply the Decimate modifier to the object and Shade Smooth. You can find an example of this in the tutorial about Background Terrain.

2. Open the Giants Editor I3D Exporter and set the path to the directory where the game is installed.

Set path to the game directory

1. Go to the Material tab and press the Detect Path button.

Detect path

1. Select the oceanShader.xml shader.

Select ocean shader

1. SAVE THE BLENDER FILE! Then press the Apply button.

Apply

1. Go to Export, ensure your object is selected, and press the Export selected button.

Export selected

1. Open the i3d file you just exported in any text editor and find the Materials section, which should look like this:

  <Materials>
    <Material name="wtr" materialId="1" diffuseColor="0.8 0.8 0.8 1" specularColor="0.501961 1 0" customShaderId="4">
      <Normalmap fileId="2"/>
    </Material>
  </Materials>

After the line with the Normalmap tag, add the following line:

      <Refractionmap coeff="1" bumpScale="0.01" withSSRData="true"/>

The result will look like this:

  <Materials>
    <Material name="wtr" materialId="1" diffuseColor="0.8 0.8 0.8 1" specularColor="0.501961 1 0" customShaderId="4">
      <Normalmap fileId="2"/>
      <Refractionmap coeff="1" bumpScale="0.01" withSSRData="true"/>
    </Material>
  </Materials>

Save the file and continue with the next steps.

Note: This is a very important step. Otherwise, the water shader will not work correctly and will have weird-looking lines all over the water plane.

1. Open Giants Editor and import the i3d file. It will appear black, but don't worry - this is normal. After importing, position the water plane in the correct location.

Position the water plane

1. Open the Material Editing window and select your water plane.

2. Change the Variation to simple and then edit the values as shown in the screenshot. These are default values for the water plane, but you can adjust them to achieve the desired effect.

Water plane values

1. Set Smoothness and Metalness to 1.

2. Click on the button near the Normal map.

Normal map

1. Click the ... button and provide the path to the water_normal.dds file. It's located at: where-the-game-is-installed/data/maps/textures/shared/water_normal.dds.

Water normal map

1. You should see the normal map in the window. Press the OK button.

Normal map window

1. Now switch to the UserAttributes tab, enter the name onCreate, select Script callback, and click Add. After that, set the Attribute value to Environment.onCreateWater.

2. On the Attributes → Transform tab, check the Rigid body checkbox.

3. Switch to the Rigid body tab and set the Preset to WATER.

4. Go to the Shape tab and uncheck the Cast shadowmap checkbox (if it's checked).

5. It should look like this.

Water plane in GE

We're done here!