PlayWay Water - high quality water system

Hi! I will respond to all messages on Thursday (possibly with a fix for VR), apologies for the delay.

 

Fraconte,

You are correct! The latest Documentation Version 1.1 does indeed show how to properly configure receiving shadows to the water.

Oh my goodness, I was actually looking at Document Version 1.0 ...... hahahhaha.... I was looking at the older documentation due to the "Documentation" link shown in the Unity Asset Store on the PlayWay Water System page. For some reason, that "Documentation" link has the old version.



The publisher will hopefully need to update that documentation link in the future.

During my travels and being highly mobile, I tend to read documentation via the web for those times.

AWESOME! Thank you again for all your help!

 

Hi! I have finally bought this asset for my project. Its a Vive project and i have three issues.

1. The same problem as @8bitgoose, the water is only rendering on my left eye.

2. There is some reflection mismatch occurring, probably has something to do with the Vive camera and the reflection setup.


3. My last issue is an estetic thing. Is it possible to achieve a more bright turquise tropical feel to the water? In the photo above you can see the brightest and most tropical that i could get it. But the look im after is this:

 

Hey @zuzzu, still loving the asset. I am a little unsure of how to use the water samples to get the water height without create a ton of garbage. I tried to unpack the way you do it in your WaterPhysics.cs but I am coming up short.

As far as I can tell, you create a water sampler and then somehow move the cached positions around somehow?

I am not sure. Anything I try and do actually messes up the other floating objects in the scene. All I need is a simple garbageless way to punch in a coordinate and get the rough height at that point.

Thanks for any help. You are great as always .

 

Hi, great asset, indeed, I have some questions regarding the Water Physics script.
I have a scene with large ship, almost 100 meter, and that ship has a lot of cranes with physics driven joints and wires..
My problem is that my ship has some "micro studdering" and that translates even worse over to the cranes..
I know the sample count minimizes this, so it is set to 60 (edited up from max 30) but I think that is a little expensive to do..(precision is also set low)
Is there a way to smooth out the ship movement more I think 20 samples should be enough, if just the ship moved smooth ..

 

Hi zuzzu !!

Can you get your asset any type of water (eg Caribbean waters as JonasPersson photo)?



I've been looking across the forum and I get online and find no photo or video to show the same visual quality you have in your demo but with Caribbean waters ...

I've seen other assets such as realistic water of Kripto, working very well for the appearance of the water is Caribbean.

You could do some demonstration of how to work your asset with this type of Caribbean waters? This is one of the thing thing missing for me to know to buy it and I do not want to buy your asset and not after what I want, because their asset is quite expensive. ¿There is a trial version to try?

2) ¿As its asset works shorelines? From the pictures you posted me many doubts about the visual aspect ...

regards

 

@web76 have you actually looked at the profile for this? I ended up having to write my own script to get more precision for my game and I'm running something like 200 to 300 samples for my ship with no issues. That buoyancy script that is included is pretty performant as far as I can tell already.

 

Please use the attached patch to fix the issue with water not being rendered for right eye on 1.1.4, but please note that it will also restore the minor issue producing white outlines around the objects when MSAA is enabled (you can use supersampling as an alternative). I will upload an update to the asset store in a few hours with this patch applied.

The next beta release will fix quite a lot of issues related to VR:

• White outlines with MSAA enabled.
• Volumes working only for left eye.
• Single pass stereo rendering.

All of these issues are not fixable for the stable release.

 

You can achieve this in two ways.

First is to sample water height directly by using methods exposed by the Water class like this: water.GetHeightAt(x, z, 0.0f, 1.0f, Time.time).

Second, a bit more performance friendly way (performance gain will be bigger in the near future when dynamic waves will affect physics too) is to use the WaterSample class. Limitation of this method is that it works with a delay of one frame, so when you call it, you get a result for the previous request, not the current one. It is fine as long as you use it for a single object that doesn't teleport and is moved by physical means.

If you need to sample displacements for multiple unrelated points, you should use either multiple WaterSample instances or method #1.

 

Sounds like a complex system. You may try a few things:

• Increase the drag on ship's RigidBody.
• Try to set Interpolate setting to disabled on all connected RigidBodies.
• Joint preprocessing may be related too.

If any of the above won't help, you will need to stick with a higher sample count. If your scene doesn't use more than 100 samples in total, it shouldn't have a noticeable impact on performance on PCs.

 

This may be a reflection that resides in your reflection probes. If this is intentional and you don't want it to be applied to the water, you may disable cubemap reflections on the Water component.

You probably won't get a perfect result with the stable release, but I'm working hard on this as we speak.

 

You can set the seed to 0 to avoid this. Unity API has improved in this aspect in 5.4 and I already use it in the beta releases. I can write a patch for you, if you would like to have it this way for the Asset Store version.

 

19-08-2016

28-09-2016

Hi zuzzu!!! there some reason why I have not responded to the last two post that I put to you ??
regards

 

@zuzzu Thanks, I can wait for the next release to get the fix.

 

Hi, apologies that it took a week to get back to you, but I was trying to reproduce this somehow with no luck so far. I've left only Water component on Unity 5.3.6 and tried to change the graphic APIs, VR etc.

It most probably is either some bug in another Unity extension that extends Unity Editor GUI in some way or a driver/Unity bug on some specific GPU that causes rendering state to become invalid and GUI be not rendered after rendering the frame.

What is your GPU? Is the #1 theory a possibility, do you use such extensions?

Sorry that it takes so many questions, but it's a tough nut to crack in this case

I was tired and went to sleep.

No trial so far. Tropical water is a work in progress.

 

You are correct sir It is fixed now, I've updated the link.

 

hi zuzzu!!

He did not answer the question:

another question ... Have you any idea how long it takes approximate implements Caribbean waters?

regards

 

Hey @ftejada

It may be a good idea to review the last 5 pages or so of posts as it has been answered in there. There are no shorelines in the current build (1.1.4) but there will be in the next major version 1.2 which is almost on Beta 5. You can get the Beta from him if you want the experimental build.

I also wouldn't count on Caribbean waters anytime soon. You should never count on someone else's asset to be updated for your purposes. Find something that is in the current state and go with it. Or download it, learn shaders and get it done.

And for those who are demanding he answer our questions, give the guy a break! He's made a kickass AAA water shader for Unity and (I think) has a full time job. The man is a powerhouse.

 

gpu - gt760m, same happened in an empty project. The weirdest part is that I couldn't reproduce it on other computer either.

I don't know what to think, because I've been using playway water for a few days with 0 problems on this laptop and then all of a sudden this started happening

 

I'm having the following results, even with the VR Cg .Shader Fix: This is in editor (Unity 5.4.0f3)



And this is as a compiled executable :



The only thing I have on that's not typical is the Oculus VR Library, and Virtual Reality Mode Enabled. I Even made a blank project to confirm, I also don't have Scion, I have Prizm, but I took out all the references to Scion, and didn't load Prizm just to make sure it was this package, I'm now moving back to 5.3.6

 

Could you attach Unity app log after running it?

Sometimes after an update you may need to select your water and click "Rebuild water shaders" from the context menu to not have pink water in builds.

 

I'll try that, thanks ! Is that not done automatically when doing a "Build" that anything required gets rebuilt ?

Edit: That was it, it stated that the Water Preset was old, and needed to be updated, something about 1.1.4 and I told it to go ahead, and it updated it. Seems odd that the Package wouldn't work as a standalone, and need to be updated. Once Updated it worked in the compile.

Fantastic Asset BTW, A fellow developer friend was raving about it, and showed me some screenshots of his project, and I was instantly envious, so I waited 'till I had some spare change put together, and finally purchased it. I'm really happy I did...

 

Okay thanks for the answer, mostly I only have one ship present, so I could just raise the samples, regarding your other tips I have tried to turn on and of with not much luck, even if I don't have any cranes or other physics object I still think the ship has the micro stutter behaviour.. the wave simulation is more than good enough for my use, I just want some smooth ship movement to be translated over to the cranes on the ship.. it ads some important dynamic to the scene..
So a smoothing of the ship behaviour was the first thing I thought of..

 

Hi!
Thanks for the Vive camera eye fix!!!

It works now.

Altough the planar reflections is still not working correctly, like the image i posted earlier. And when i look above the horizon they disappear completely (not fading, disappearing instant). With or without Cubemap reflections enabled.

Thank you for you help!

 

hi
Thanks for answering!

Well I do not speak English and even read several pages of the forum, there are times I do not quite understand what is said.I do not know whether or not zuzzu is working full time, it is something I understand and respect. But I think also understand and to respect my ignorance. And if I ask is because I need it, not on a whim.

I apologize for my ignorance and if I have upset someone (eg zuzzu), but I think I've been polite and patient and I also have the right to ask because I am interested in your asset but I have doubts and do not want to be wrong with the purchase.

I asked on August 19 the first time and got no answer. Before yesterday I returned to ask the questions that you have seen and after seeing that zuzzu answered all messages except to mine, I asked again.

When he finally responded zuzzu me, I see that he had not answered all the questions I asked.

No .... but I think I have done nothing wrong.
Again I apologize if I've upset someone because my only intention was to inform

regards

 

I'm using Playway water with Time of day and on a night or in stormy weather the water turns black, is there a way i can avoid this please?

 

I'm having the same results with Simul-Sky, but then I looked at what that sort of lighting condition looks like in real-life, and I see this :

So I think what you're experiencing is physically accurate, what did you want it to look like creatively ?

 

Actually, I think that looks great.

But if it is too dark for game purposes, I'm sure you can figure out a way to add light where the player needs it. Put a faint point light on the character or on the camera ... something like that.

 

Thanks guys. I suppose it's worse when the weather is overcast. I'll post a picture

 

How do i get into the beta group?

 

Hi. Send me a private message with your Invoice No. You should have it in a confirmation email from Unity after a purchase from the Asset Store.

Hi, I'm not upset, it seems to be a misunderstanding I've responded to your question about tropical water indirectly, because JonasPersson asked the same thing earlier. In short, tropical water is a work in progress. It takes me a lot of time, but I'm getting closer and closer to a final result.

I appreciate your understanding very much about the job, but still in the end my job is my problem and shouldn't be yours. I don't consider it an excuse and invest as much time as I can in this asset.

Still I'm just one person and this is not just a shader asset, but a complex water system. Lately I often choose its further development and bug fixing over general support, because I have some life too and in the end I hope that's the way to satisfy more people.

I hope to improve in this area after the next stable release (the one that's currently being released as a beta).

This is something that doesn't happen on my side so I need to ask for some more data. Specifically I'm interested in your Unity version and GPU model.

Would you be willing to let me look into this on your machine using TeamViewer?

 

I was able to mask the water reflection issue with fog and using the "offset" slider under the planar reflections area in the water settings. In my specific case, my solution worked. If you are using a skysphere/skybox (a physical mesh sky) the water could be extending passed the sky sphere and reflecting the objects behind it.

Now for my issue

I am using playway with rtp. I am not sure who I should be talking to (if this is a shader draw order battle) but I figured I would start here as it seems to be an issue with the tesellation of the waves, though i am unsure. I did try to search around for other people who had this issue, I saw one forum post but the question was never answered.

As you can see, bits of the terrain are popping through the waves, but only on the horizon. It also seems to happen with the much larger waves when the camera is near the water surface. It almost looks as if there is a thin gap between the water and the wave heights. I tried setting up a second camera to render only the water if the player is at a specific height in relation to the water. That solves the problem but it introduces another issue, I lose the terrain under the water since the second camera is drawing above the terrain camera and lose the sweet effect of "half in half out".

I was wondering if you have any ideas on how I can solve this issue.

 

Luckily, I've fixed this a couple of days ago Please use the attached patch. It happens in the recent versions when "render volumes" is enabled on WaterCamera, but there are no volumes in the scene.

I am also going to upload this fix to the Asset Store in a couple of days, as a side note.

 

Hmmmm, that didnt fix it for me. However, after learning the cause may be from the water camera, I disabled "render water depth" while keeping "render volumes" enable, and the problem went away. Now the issue is underwater, I am not getting any water depth

Edit: And actually, whether render volumes is on or off, the problem exists. It happens when I have "render water depth" enabled. When its disabled, the terrain clipping goes away, but the depth is removed.

Images : http://imgur.com/a/Ctlpf

 

Hm, it may be something else then. Can you try to replace this file (it should go to "PlayWay Water/Shaders/Water") and see if this helps? Beware though that this will disable volumetric features of this asset, it is only to determine the cause.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Atpx7H7m5qiwmo86VoK5z2SiJ-DDXQ

 

That did the trick. Works just as I would expect it to. Render water depth is on and the terrain is no longer clipping. I also have the water depth underwater. Whatever you changed, it fixed it

Also to answer the tropical question, kind of. I spent about 30 min putting together this scene using terrain/assets I had available in my current project. It got pretty close. Im sure you could get closer by spending a little more time on it! Taking this further, if I wanted to recreate the tropical image posted above, i would put a blue tint to the sand that is underwater and spend more time trying to get the colors correct using color correcting image effects like amplify color. The water color is a little off, but its close. Im using beautify in this picture. Also, I dont have the same rocks as in the image so I made due with what i had.

 

hello! I want to create splash particle and ripple effect on this water.(like foam particle) but not apply unity`s projector and vertex decal shader, because tesselation water. how I use decal particle on this water?

 

Setup help appreciated: Anyone using SIMUL trueSky Alpha + Playway? There seem to be artifacts underwater.

 

Hi!
I dont know if this is the right forum, since Im using the beta at the moment.

I managed to make some nice tropical water with it. looking a lot better! Thanks!

Although:
1. i cant see any planar reflections at all.
2. the receive shadow toggle seems to have disappeared, is this disabled?

Any thoughts?

 

Hi again!

A thought about a possible improvement on the sss. i dont know if it makes any sense.
It would be super nice if there was a setting that could determine how deep in the ocean the sss effect should be visible, sometimes it feels like there is a light coming from the bottom of the ocean if you turn up the sss effect.

 

Hi! For those who feel brave, there is a smaller beta 4.5 release on the way to beta 5.

It should fix all reported VR bugs and also has a fully functional single pass stereo rendering. Be sure to enable it on your WaterCamera though, because there is temporarily no API in Unity 5.4 to check if single pass stereo rendering is enabled. It required many modifications to the core of this asset and generally a lot of hard work to make this working.

From now on water renders depth, masks etc. through CommandBuffers instead of custom cameras so there may be some performance improvement, if your app is CPU bound.

There is some improvement in precision and performance of sampling the water height for a point.

It seems that on Unity 5.4 SIMD acceleration no longer causes any issues. It should be safe to enable it for your projects back again (you can find it in this menu: "Edit / Project Settings / Water"). It probably won't improve performance of your game, because all related tasks are asynchronous, but may decrease CPU use during storms etc. Be sure to disable it though, if you will get some UGUI related crashes and please report that here.

I apologize for delayed responding. I won't be fully available until October 18th.

Would you be willing to connect through a TeamViewer? I'm not sure what may be causing the issues with planar reflections, but I'm sure I can debug this fast with frame debugger.

Receive shadow toggle will be back soon. I have removed it because it had an effect only for opaque water and this was confusing, so it will reappear in a different place this time. It doesn't affect shadow receiving of refractive water (there is a special workflow for this described in the doc).

Have your tried changing the order of UnderwaterIME? There are some issues with trueSky in general that I'm hoping to resolve soon. It's very different from other sky assets.

You can use some particle effect from the asset store. Personally, I'm using splashes from this publisher:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=publisher:11890

Ripples are not supported for now. I'm planning this for beta 6 (it is going to be the last beta before 2.0 release).

 

Hi! zuzzu! Thank you for your reply.

I have 2 questions.

1. How can I ever know when the next version comes out?
2. Is this ripple system tessellation decal?

I hope next version comes out as soon as possible

 

It will work in a current way of applying such effects, it will blend the wave particles into a water displacement map in a custom projector space.

It will take at least 5 weeks to get to beta 6. I need to implement a gpu wave particle system for it. The cpu one is very good for bigger waves, because has the possibility to affect the physics with them and has some advanced behaviours, but isn't reliable for lots of small waves. It will take some work.

 

Hi, does anyone have a way to enable the water to be affected by fog? I can't get any fog to cover the water.

 

Hello Zuzzu,

I've just purchased this asset and I'm loving it. It's a real beauty.
The only issue I have is with Volumetric Fog & Mist plugin. You can see the fog but its all messed up. the water looks fine however the fog is like a fog fire. pointing up ect hard to explain really. Anyhow I've posted the issue in their forum too so maybe you might know what needs to be done.

Thanks for your time.

 

ignore last msg. It works fine in new project. I dont know why it had this issue before.

Great asset by the way. I'm really pleased i went with this one.

 

Hi,

There are two ways to do this using the Asset Store release. First is to make water opaque (blend edges off, refraction off) and the second is to comment/remove [ImageEffectOpaque] line from the fog effect script file. This will make it working correctly with the water, but may cause issues with transparent objects.

Beta releases introduce new image effect render modes that are compatible with most fogs with no special drawbacks.

 

I got it to work in 5.3.4 but have not been able to make it not mess up on 5.4.x. Most of that currently rests on Simul, since when I replace their sky with a skybox Playway behaves as I'd expect. Simul is having similar issues as zuzzu is I'd imagine, but somehow they're still struggling with it. Until recently I could not get any scene compiled and running, showing just the sky (VR).

 

hi zuzzu!!!

Should it also be compatible with the asset "Volumetric Fog & Mist" ??

regards

 

Hi, is it possible to get hold of a beta release please?