PlayWay Water - high quality water system

@zuzzu It's still happening in the editor with that patch.

 

It's something new then. Would you be able to prepare a repro scene? Simply copy the water into a new scene and send to me privately as asset bundle with dependencies (especially water profile). I will do my best to fix this asap.

 

@zuzzu
Thanks for your continued support of an awesome asset! Do you have any suggestions on applying good caustics when in underwater mode? Currently, I'm applying projectors to each object and turning them on and off when I'm below and above the water, but my understanding is that this isn't really the best path.

Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!

 

I'm not exactly sure how to reproduce it anymore. It sometimes happens in a build as well, which makes it almost seem random then as to when it happens. This time in a build, once when I started it up it worked fine. Relaunched, in the same part of the world, and it has the issue.

 

Hey,

Any chance updating the demo on the Asset Store with the one that comes with the asset. I'm interested in having a play with this before I consider purchasing.

Thanks

 

Caustics are implemented in the beta. There are two modes - simple texture and raymarching caustics. Simple texture mode should be superior to projectors, while raymarching caustics should be better than simple texture, but may produce some issues near the shores.

My guess is that CPU stress may cause this. Simply send me your water and I will do my best to break it somehow

I temporarily have more work than usually and try to work on just the important stuff. You can simply buy it and see, if it works for you. If not, I don't ask questions when it comes to refunds, no worries.

 

Hey zuzzu,

I'm having some difficulties setting up PlayWay Water for Oculus Rift with the Fog Volume Asset and Single pass rendering using Unity 5.5.0rc2.

Spoiler: Refraction Problem

Refraction Off:

Refraction On:

There's also a bug the water or my volumetric fog asset with the ZBuffer, maybe that can be resolved, too?

Spoiler: Z Buffer Problem

WaterCamera.cs active, The Geometry is hidden by Clouds and fog that is much further away.

WaterCamera.cs is inactive, everything's fine except there's no Water.

I tried removing the WaterDepth flag and the command buffers, resulting in heavy flickering on the on the Z-Wrong pixels.

 

Hi, i have a question regarding the mentioned water profiles. So if i understood it right i have to create waterprofiles for every kind of water type i want to have. Is it possible to change the wave height or wind speed in one profile or do i have to load another profile?

 

Is there an issue with PlayWay and Unity 5.5? My shadows aren't working, and instead there's just this huge circle of shadow surrounding the player. If I disable the Water Camera component then everything works.

 

Same here..

 

Unity 5.5.0f3
PlayWay Water System 1.1.5

Hi,

In the new Unity 5.5, the water seems to be warping/bending all shadows in the scene. Plus, shadows are all displaced and not being rendered properly. To isolate these water & shadow issues, when disabling the "Water" script, all these shadow anomalies become absent.

Can you confirm if these shadow issues are occuring in Unity 5.5 with the water?

Thanks

 

Same thing for me. I'm hoping we get a reply soon.

 

Hello,

it appears that the Volume Substract feature is not working in Unity 5.5. Even the specific sample in the galleon demo that that is supposed to highlight the difference between the Volume Subract script being on and off shows no difference. Water is always clipping through the boat.

Hoping for a fix.

Best,
SanityIsOverrated

 

How do i control the water transparency?
Its so transparent that i can see through to the bottom of my sandy terrain.

 

Hi!

I just downloaded unity 5.5

There seems to be a bug happening on objects thats not in the water. There is a shadow applied:

 

Hi,

I'm aware of the issues with Unity 5.5 and I'm actively working on a solution. Please stay patient for approximately a week, it requires some work to fix everything. I'll probably release a partially fixed version earlier as this is obviously a massive problem. Feel free to send me a private message, if you can't wait and need this fix before it lands on the Asset Store.

In the meantime, there is a new version in the beta cycle that introduces the long awaited swell. You can now define a fully mobile weather systems around your location (like storms) and assign water profiles to them. The water system will determine the waves that arrive at your current location from them in realtime, along with the dissipation. It adds a lot to the visual realism, because it's very rare to encounter just one wave system on the sea in a real world. This feature doesn't affect performance.

I've also simplified a way to specify sampling precision that you want to get on the CPU side for physics and custom scripting. It wasn't really intuitive before. From now on, you may just define the desired standard error in scene units and the weather system will do all the math to comply.

There are also some foam improvements in terms of performance, quality and configuration options. I will be sending this new version soon. Please stay patient, because 5.5 fix is my priority right now.

I will release the beta as stable as soon as I will complete my work on Mac support and bow and stern waves. I'm going to create a website to let you access the beta releases easier, but it may take me some time.

Kind regards,
zuzzu

 

Hi zuzzu,
firstly, your water asset is amazing! I bought it yesterday and was able to achieve amazing results in no time at all
Keep up the good work!

Secondly, we are working on a project where we would really need the shorelines, so maybe you could hook me up with the beta, so we can already start having a little bit of fun with it and do some testing

Regards,
Ben

 

Hi zuzzu,
1. I have started a private conversation with you, but there was no answer for about 2 weeks.
2. Which plugin can capture your water in 360 video. I tried the following plugins: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/53264 https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/38755
But they don't capture the water in the resulting images

 

Hi! I'm having some trouble with how PlayWay writes to the depth buffer. I discovered it when I was rendering fog with Enviro which uses an image effect to render fog using the depth buffer.

The problem is observed when waves at different distances are overdrawn for boundless water. So when we have high waves and we set the camera close to the water level, some wave tops will naturally appear above the horizon and there will be several waves that will be overdrawn. And because the depth buffer is rendered using "ZTest Always" (in Depth.shader) we will have the results as shown in depth_buffer_ztest_always.PNG. As you can see, the depth buffer is not correct as the waves far far away won the ZTest. Changing the ZTest to Less fixes the issue (depth_buffer_ztest_chaged_to_less.PNG).

Haven't found any side-effects of changing the ZTest to Less so maybe it is just a bug.
Cheers!

Edit: Using Unity 5.4.2f2 and building for DX11

 

I've uploaded a new version to the Asset Store yesterday, that should fix all 5.5 issues. If it doesn't, please let me know.

Changelog 1.1.6:
- Unity 5.5 compatibility.
- Radial grid geometry is now correctly rendered when ortographic projection is used on the camera.
- Increased water sampling precision and stability.

Changelog 2.0b5:
- Unity 5.5 compatibility.
- Increased water sampling precision and stability.
- Changes mentioned in this post.

I've also managed to reproduce the error with Unity GUI becoming blank after clicking Play. It seems to affect only editor (5.4 and 5.5) and happens when there are subtractive volumes in the scene and there are no image effects on the water camera at all. In case of encountering this issue, simply add any image effect to the main camera to fix it. It seems to be some internal Unity bug related to not setting the render target properly and I probably won't be able to address this on my side.

It seems that the high increase in elevation sampling precision that I've promised earlier for the beta users wasn't there, because I've sent pretty much unedited files related to this matter. Apologies, I haven't slept well for a while 1.3.6 and 2.0b5 now both contain correct files that should increase the sampling precision. Hopefully, it will also fix the bug reported by @emrys90, as I've attached the same unedited files in the patch earlier.

Thanks! To get the beta, simply send to me a private message with your Invoice No from the Asset Store purchase confirmation e-mail and I will respond with a link.

You may try to use Uniform Grid geometry for the water, it may help. I'm not sure how these plugins work.

Your fix is perfectly correct. I've already did the same thing in the beta releases.

It seems that I haven't fixed this for the stable releases. Thanks for bringing my attention to this.

 

using the newest unity 5.5F3 and I have a question.
in the pdf it says "Render Water Depth: Renders water depth into Unity’s native depth map. Recommended."
but with it enabled, I get a weird shadow on objects that collide with the water.

Spoiler: Additional

to anyone else - I'm trying to setup an infinite water I get weird pulling of the ocean mesh, especially if the camera goes above 100m - anyone had success with this?
I have a secondary camera that renders only 1000+ and terrain+water
100m secondary and primary camera rendering water


1000m - the water's corners pull in

just FYI - I'm building an FPS where you can swim and fly (even go into low orbit)

 

I published the project to X64 stand alone but it shows a purple plane without water. However it works in the editor. Why????

 

Dear zuzzu,

thanks for that effort, good job with the 5.5 fixes. We just updated the asset from the store. The problem with the Volume Subtract is indeed fixed. Before the update, we also had the shadow issue that digimbyte posted, but it is fixed now. Working great again.

Best,
SanityIsOverrated

 

You can try to rebuild shaders, from the option menu of the water script in the water prefab.

 

Hi zuzzu, when is the new beta version of Playway water available ?

 

Hi, does PlayWay Water System have a wake effect? I'm creating a boat simulation game and am wondering if it already has a wake effect that I can use when the boat is moving.

 

This looks great! Does it come with a boat/ship controller script, so i can steer a ship with buoyancy/physics over the water/ocean? Or can you recommend a boat/ship controller script asset that will work seamlessly with PlayWay Water?

 

My billboarded textures (with World Builder) are being drawn behind the water. I've looked through this thread to see if there was some known issue, but I don't see anything.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

~~ chainsawpenguin ~~

UPDATE: I was having the same problem with AQUAS, but that water system has a place for me to set the render queue value to 2800, which fixes the problem. How would I do the same for the Playway Water?

 

Hi! I hope the work on 2.0 is going fine.
Really looking forward to that!

If there would be one last thing i would really wish for, it would be more settings for the water clowdyness, and color at different deapths etc (and all the objects underneath) . Now its like all of these parameters is just set by one color input. I havent tried the latest beta (but the one before), and i still had trouble creating supernice turquise clear tropical water.

Thanks for all the work and a grea asset!

 

I know mobile support is 'experimental', but do you have any recommended settings?

Thanks.

 

How long does it take for an update to hit the asset store? I'm still seeing version 1.1.6. Great work by the way.

 

Depends. Recently things may have been slowed down by the holiday season and Unity staff vacations.

 

I will upload a new beta release today at night. I'm still struggling with the bow and stern waves. Version 2.0b6 changelog:

• Fixes the remaining Unity 5.5 compatibility issues.
• Improved GPU performance.
• Greatly improved simple caustics.
• Depth-specific underwater absorption colors as requested by @JonasPersson.
• Greatly improved radial grid topology. It now works perfectly with low FOV, looks better when low tesselation is used and generally fixes some minor artifacts.

I apologize for the delays in sending the previous beta. I will catch up with my correspondence very soon.

It was a typo in my forum post, 1.1.6 is the newest release to date. Do you experience issues with Unity 5.5?

 

I tried release version 1.1.6 with Unity 5.5 and it works fine. Can't wait to try out the new beta.

 

Excelent news about the upcomming 2.0b6 and Unity 5.5, please send me the beta too when it's ready, want to try some things (i've send you the invoice number a few days ago via PM)

 

I've forgot to mention some important changes in 2.0b6:

• There is now an "improved" mode for drag and flow forces that is very realistic, but also heavier to compute. It requires a well-made mesh collider to ensure that the ship won't travel on the sides. There are tips in its inspector that describe how to create a proper mesh.
• Underwater effect was overhauled and existing water profiles may not look as expected. This is an ongoing work and I hope to add bubbles soon.
• From now on I recommend to use the Projected Texture mode for caustics. I don't supply any texture to use with this mode for now, but any caustics texture from the internet will do just fine for the time being. I will probably abandon Physical mode as it turned out to be too complex, too heavy to compute and not customizable.
• Some shader optimizations will work only with Unity 5.5.

As always, I can't promise that the default water profiles are optimal in the beta releases. You should be able to get a way better results on your own.

 

hi, how can one interpolate between random water profiles during time? (sorry, not so experienced with scripting i must say...)

 

@zuzzu , i cant make the new beta 2.0b6 work in DX9, the ocean turns pink without any movement, asset store version was working fine, and the beta works fine too in same scene but in DX11. Any tips?

 

Yes. I'm getting shadows that render behind geometry. Also, the water wont render unless the light is shadow casting. Its just a jumbled mess without shadows.

 

These issues seem to be related to "Render Water Depth" checkbox. None of the issues happen when its turned off however my water looks way different since it was tweaked to use this feature.

 

I got your Water System yesterday and i think it's really great. However in VR i'm having similar shadowing Issues as @Rave-TZ above, one eye renders the shadows of objects correctly, and the other one renders a shadow influenced by the waves - as if it's rendering the shadow on the water below the terrain but showing it on the terrain.

Correct eye:


Wavy, constantly moving shadow on the other eye:


I'm using Unity 5.5.0f3 and Playway 1.1.6. I'm waiting for beta access (sent you a PM), hopefully the issue is fixed there ;-)

Thanks

 

Take a look at "PlayWay Water/Samples/Scripts/PresetDropdown.cs" script for an example how to interpolate profiles at runtime. Mostly this line:

Code (CSharp):

1. water.SetProfiles(
2.             new Water.WeightedProfile(sourceProfile, 1.0f - p),
3.             new Water.WeightedProfile(targetProfile, p)
4.         );

Ah yes, sorry about that. I will fix this for the next minor update soon.

Any possibility that it's some interaction with the image effects? I will investigate it today.

Edit: Also, do you use subtractive or additive volumes?

Yes, it will be fine with the beta. It's not fixable for the stable releases sadly, at least not without introducing all the changes from the beta releases.

 

Hello and Happy New Year, can we make areas of calm water and more molded areas?
Is there a script to move a ship with the keyboard keys or is it just a basic shift script?
I can not find your demo online !!! Apart from a video.
Thank you

 

Hi, I'm new to using PlayWay Water and am struggling a bit. I've got two main problems I'm hoping someone might advise me on.

One, I cannot get the buoyancy right on my little boat, despite fiddling about with all the settings. It's submerged half the time, and every major change I make either sinks it entirely or sends it spinning round the Y axis like mad. Any suggestions?

Two, when the camera does submerge below the water surface, there's no water beneath. Do I need to add another component somewhere, or have I messed something up?

Video of my tragic efforts at:

I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

Have to say, this water is amazing and I'm glad i switched from Ceto.

Has anyone gotten caustics to work with the latest beta? I add the Caustic Light Script to my Directional Light and set it up with a texture, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

 

Hello zuzzu,
thanks for giving us access to the beta. I hope you don't mind if I share a fix I found necessary in order to get the caustics to work.
I don't know if this is the same issue iddqd has, but for me, the shader didn't compile and unity was constantly reporting an error about the shader requiring two passes or something like that.
I found that two declarations were missing

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. float4    _LocalMapsCoords;
3. // after here
4. sampler2D _CausticsDistortionMap; // <---- insert this
5. float4 _CausticsOffsetScale; // <---- and this
6. // before this
7. half4 CalculateLight (unity_v2f_deferred i)
8.  

Then it worked and it looks nice. However, to be honest, I was mistaken as I was hoping this caustic effect would be a volumetric light effect, i.e. some "godrays" like this


But don't mind that. I have a vague idea that this would require a raymarching technique in an image effect, so I fear it will tank the performance anyway.

Best,
Marcel

 

Thanks for your fix @SanityIsOverrated

I no longer get the error you mentioned, but unfortunately i still don't see any caustics. Should i be adding a caustics shader to the Shader Set (Ocean (Fully featured))?

Thanks.

 

So I added the "Caustics Light" Script to the sun light and set up a Caustics texture I grabbed from the internet. The script offers you to make the appropriate changes through a button. You can check that under "Edit -> Project Settings -> Graphics" you have Deferred set to custom shader and Shader set to "PlayWay Water-Scene-DeferredShading" (under PlayWay Water/Shaders/Deferred". Obviously, this only works with deferred rendering.

Hope this helps.

 

Oh ok, i'm using forward rendering. @zuzzu are there any plans to make caustics work with forward rendering?

Thanks.