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Reflections on flat water surface appear off

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by whidzee, Dec 15, 2019.

  1. whidzee

    whidzee

    Joined:
    Nov 20, 2012
    Posts:
    166
    Hey gang. I'm still fairly new to dealing with reflection probes and all that.

    I have this swimming pool with a diving tower next to it. i have a reflection probe who's box covers the entire pool and tower. i have set the probe to be box projection. Yet when you look at it here the reflection does not seem to line up with the tower. I have tried setting the probe to be real time but i get the same results.

    Any ideas?

    upload_2019-12-15_11-36-27.png
     
  2. bgolus

    bgolus

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2012
    Posts:
    12,329
    A reflection probe captures a reflection the scene from the point of view of a single position in space, the position of the reflection probe itself. A reflection from any other position but the pivot of the reflection probe will not produce a correct reflection. That means the entire water surface is reflecting from the wrong position.

    It’s a good enough approximation for reflections for complex surfaces, especially those that are rough. For everything else the fact it’s wrong is clear, like a mirror or a pool water. For those you want to use a planar reflection. See the water example in the Standard Assets package on the Asset Store, or check out this one used for the Adam demo Unity did 2 years ago.
    https://github.com/keijiro/AdamPlaneReflection
     
    kcastagnini likes this.
  3. whidzee

    whidzee

    Joined:
    Nov 20, 2012
    Posts:
    166
    Hey thanks for this. the water in the standard assets is looking great. However if i look down at the water i am seeing the reflections disappear but as i look up the objects are appearing in the reflections. i am guessing this is because when i am looking down i am not rendering the objects and therefore they aren't getting reflected.

    Any idea on how I can go about fixing this? the dissappearing reflections are kind of jaring
     
  4. bgolus

    bgolus

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2012
    Posts:
    12,329
    I haven't looked at the water from Standard Assets in a long time, but I do know they've been semi-broken the last several Unity versions. That culling issue is one I think I've seen others mention, I'm not entirely sure what the cause is or the solution. Sorry.
     
    BrandyStarbrite likes this.
  5. flipper2017

    flipper2017

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2017
    Posts:
    3