NordLake - Optimised water system

So, any more news on how things are going with the platform or its "plugins"?

 

Seems I'm late to the party. I work on fishing simulations and would love to test/purchase this on all platforms.

 

Me too. I'd buy it.

 

My money is ready to be thrown at you.. I have been dying for a water system like this.

 

Impressive.

 

add me to the list of buyer's

 

What happened to this? Still in development?

 

At the moment a developement is paused because my work on CScape sysstem. But I will be working back pretty soon.

 

Please if you need a tester, or if I can buy your shaders let me know. Desparately in need of even a just passable water shader for Unity that works in VR.

 

Looks very nice! I am also exited to try this.

 

Damn Oli, the light version of shader in cscape looks really good. A little more tests and I can retire two other water system I am using; any ETA? Is there list of difference between lite and full?

 

I'd be very interested in purchasing this. I look forward to watching your progress!

 

Lite version that is included in Cscape is a simple version with muddy water and no refraction and it's mostly usable for rivers (as in CScape). A full version comes with full intergation for terrain (or other meshes), with a fake refraction at no adittional processing cost. So, it is as performant as Lite version in CScape.

 

Wow, beautiful job with this!

 

Hi there , looks very nice so far! Can I ask do you plan to be able to draw rivers with your asset, also can you make ocean type water or only lakes?

 

Any news? I'm looking for a good VR solution ... Do you mind if I'm asking when it will be released and how much it would cost?

 

Since my last post June 25 , still looking forward and hoping this gets released.

 

*heavy breathing*
there is not one single good performing water solution out there in VR (singlepass) and you pause yours? you could *swim* in the moneys it would generate

 

I have dreams that this one day is released.
Damn this guy makes beautiful stuff

 

Yes, but unfortunately, NordLake is quite a beast on it's own. I'm reclutant at releasing it because I know that there are users who could bash it hard. Form what i've learned, there would be many happy users, and also many not so happy. Water attracts everyone, but not everyone is good at understanding some technical compromises that has to be taken. I'm still thinking about releasing this one, and I will make a decision next month (when my final version of CScape hits store).

 

SINCERELY hoping this gets released. Still no hope for other VR water solutions...

 

+1 hoping this gets released as well.. looks so good

 

May I suggest you be very blunt and upfront on its capabilities and drawbacks....that can go a long way to preventing bad reviews.
Something is better than nothing. We currently have no water alternatives for single pass VR right now.

 

Very realistic, goodwork

 

Looks great man

 

Something along this lines can go?

NordLake water is a solution that was made to simplify good looking water rendering for VR (or mobile)
Why it's good:
-Renders in VR with a single pass rendering
-Uses reflection probes and Screen Space reflections.
-Takes into account ambient occlusion effects
-Doesn't use any transparent shaders,and this simplifies rendering a lot.
-It's capable of rendering good quality lake water.

What you should know before buying:
-It isn't dynamic and can't interact with objects.
-It is best to be used with correctly placed light probess or SSR.
-Dynamic objects doesn't cast underwater refraction.
-Requires a setup that can be somewhat complicated for users that aren't experienced in using unity.
Nord lake is best when used with Linear Lighting and PBR workflows.
p. s. I wasn't planing to release this asset, but many users found that it works find - so be aware that this asset is in beta stage, and I willdo anything that I can to make it more powerfull.
What I will do?
-try to implement an easier workflow,
-try to elaborate shading
What I'm not intended to do?
-adding dynamic waterr physical features.
-solving a reflection of non static objects.
-adding anything that is impossible to do: like features abowe. NordLake is a system that has to be optimized while keeping a good look. It is a fake option that looks realistic, for anyone that needs a fake option. And a good framerate.

 

This looks seriously impressive. Kind of a letdown now that I know it's just reflection probes.
Seriously... I mean, I don't really know what is current stage of this project, but if there's anything planar reflections are made to be used for are lakes, tbh. Especially when the reflection is super convoluted in the distance (eg. you don't need all that much detail). You just need to figure out how to blur it to look reasonable, that's something I have yet to see done properly (since that Planar Reflections Pro asset is pretty much dead at this rate) + it solves the dynamic reflections problem. Boom.
But I'm getting it regardless, I can live with those limitations but I know there will be much more situations where people would want to see more than static cubemap reflections, y'know.
Also, SSR is horrendous for water in all situations, no exceptions. Why is it considered an industry standard is completely beyond me.

 

Not to mention I actually had a hard time realizing the first video was not real life footage, like what the actual F***. I thought it was a prank like "let's film an actual lake and put it along with the other two hehe" but the trees texture at the end gave it away.

 

I'm making some progress on a new version of NordLake, that will soon be available on Assetstore. I had to rewrite all shaders to be able to support SRP LW and HD (in future). I have still some work to do in tuning shaders for easy user experience - but for now I'm quite happy how it works.

 

Wow !! I have been lusting after this system since mar 2016!!

I am really happy you have found time for this project. I grew up around lakes, so
this makes me really happy. I will be one of the first to get this ASAP it is on the store.

Thank you, so much for finding the time and for the hard this must be.

 

Well... I for one am excited to purchase this and use it! It looks breathtaking.

 

Looks awesome

 

Some new progress on this: I'mj adding a light (on performance) fluid dynamics simulation. It uses some neat trick to keep everything performant and artisticcaly friendly.

 

Wow, it looks amazing!

 

Some new tests of fluids:

 

This looks amazing and I can't wait to get it from the store for my VR project!

 

SO is there any chance on this getting released ? Or should I just stop watching thread and
forget about this package. Wanting something your not going to get is not fun.

 

I'm in the author's CScape thread, and it sounds like he's been focused on trying to bring that project out of beta. He recently announced a performance increase that's coming for that plugin, and it has to be awfully close now to coming out of beta.

My impression is that he'll come back to NordLake when he's done with CScape, and get it in a good spot for release. CScape is just taking longer to finish off than he ever expected. Hopefully not an infinite amount of time, though.

 

Cool, Thank you so much. I have seen CScape ( have not bought ) but it looks amazing, and eventually want to play around with my VR rift .....

EDIT ... Since I had not looked at CScape for a long time, so I went to go look and I had thought it was more for
some reason. Anyway I just hit the buy button for CScape ... because yes Oliver work is incredible and I am sure
this will turn out the same. I think he is a developer that will be good to support.

 

There is a "lite" version of NordLake in CScape. Maybe you can use that till the full version is released.

 

I will be generous, and for a limited time - I will keep here a link to an old version of Nord Lake package (before I started rewriting everything). You all are free to test it. Final version is quite better, but until it's final release, you can try this one. I hope that you to be fair in it's usage (inform me where are you using it, and give me some credits). If you wan't to support future developement of Nord lake, feel free to support it by buying some of my extremely usefull assets (VR Panorama or CScape). And of course, you are pretty on your own in using Nord Lake as it is - Unfortunately, I don't have too much time to give a serious support for this version.
Here is a link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6q2zzdz98bpd6x/NordLakeAlpha.unitypackage?dl=0
Of course, any feedback is more than welcome.

 

Very gracious to provide your files. I have tried this, I imported your asset into a new project (in Unity 2017 and 2018) but see a pink material, see:


If you have time I would be interested if you can determine what might be wrong, or maybe I missed something?

 

Are you on Mac or PC? Is DX11 activated? What building settings do you use? And what version of Unity are you using? I have tried on 2017.4.1f1 and it works as expected..

 

Ah, ok, I think I've got it: you should switch your project to linear colorspace.

 

Thank you for a sneak peek!! That's why in part I bought CScape yesterday, and I do agree if you think you will use any of his assets in the future... it will help development, plain and simple.

 

This looks great, maybe even for non-VR purposes

 

That's a nice looking shader, love the edge blending with "wetness" effect. I wouldn't mind making an attempt at a water surface shader one day. Shame my head is in space and not on the ground!

 

I just downloaded your demo, and I'm a believer. It's an upgrade over any water I know about in the store so far. Definitely some prerelease quirks but call me an early adopter!

 

As with many others, I'm spectacularly interested in the long-term use of this shader.

The main issue I am having seems to be a loss of the spectactular Fresnel specular highlight that is one of the finest features of the shader, at runtime.

The following picture illustrates the issue:


(please ignore slight camera angle variation, not related to NordLake at all)

This issue is correctable via using "Create Material Preset" from the desired lake material's settings button to create a copy of the material when it can be captured with the correct settings, and then replacing the material at runtime:


It is also possible I'm just using it wrong, or not properly using the correct render/update sequence.

May I ask what the NordLake shader is written in? Given some "leftover" nodes in the shader itself it seems to be one of the node-based editors - Amplify or Shader Forge, possibly?

I have multi-year shader experience and I'd be willing to help debug the shader, pro bono, just to be able to evaluate the fixed version further.

 

Thanks for putting up the package download, thats generous of you. Im an open world mobile developer, working in gamma space https://www.instagram.com/protopopgames/?hl=en but Ive been testing and considering a move to linear. I have a less realistic, more expressionist art direction but it would be cool to see how this would look..

I love anything that moves nature simulation forward. The science of what you're doing is beyond me, but its easy to see you've put i a lot of work and are creating something special. And your art based sim approach is a clever idea.

Keep up the inspiring work

Update: i tested it out. It didnt work on IOS (not surprised) but i switched to PC and its beautiful. It feels like im standing on the edge of a calm lake. Great work.