SUIMONO 2.0 - Interactive Water System

It looks like Suimono. The only issue is the new OVR integration in Unity is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. I used to get 60-70fps with a scene with just Suimono and skybox, now I get a whopping 7.2fps with the direct integration. Also the camera system is all sorts of goofed up as well. It is a good start for the direct integration but so slow to be near useless.

Edited:
5.1.0B3 Suimono + OVR Integration


5.1.0B3 Suimono without OVR


5.0.1f1 Suimono with Oculus Plugin gets around 35-40fps, I can't get a screenshot of the stats.

5.0.1f1 Suimono without Oculus Plugin

 

Thanks @CaptainMurphy for posting your stats and sharing your experience!

Strange thing is, I have much better performance with the vr integration than with the ovr plugin before?!
Good to know Suimono works correctly inside the rift, but 7fps only with suimono and skybox is useless!

Which gpu you are running on? Could you please upload this build (5.1.0.3 suimono and skybox) if its not too big?

 

I am running an 660GTX, i5 3570k, 16gb RAM, and a Samsung 840 SSD. Not a slouch, but also not exactly a big gamer. It is a good median test machine for our target audience though. It seem the slowdown might be mostly limited to using it in Extended mode in editor. When I built the project and tested it in dedicated mode it was a lot better.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/shiwilyrqe4zi28/Suimono Test Win32.zip?dl=0

There is a build from 5.1.0b3 using just Suimono and the default skybox. It is VR enabled and I included a shortcut for Oculus in there as well. It is rather simple, just a camera above the water.

 

Cool, thanks! I will try it at home with my GTX 670 and tomorrow at office with my workstation R9 290!

 

Hello Chingwa,

found another error. This one causes Unity to crash.

If you have a player load into a level with the water, and then while underwater load back into the first level, it will cause it to say the transforms are missing.

I scripted it to just re-run the script when it says that, but now when I head back to the second level, it causes Unity to crash instantly.

any ideas on how to fix this, or what may be causing it?

 

Hi Therian,
Can't say for sure what would be causing this, but it does sound like some kind of issue arises during the scene loading process. It might be worth taking the Suimono_Module object and making it an object that carries over from scene to scene, rather than trying to load a new one for every scene. Try taking a look at Unity's DontDestroyOnLoad(); functions.

Not sure if the missing transforms are directly related, but if you can PM me the full error messages I might be able to narrow down what's happening.

 

@chingwa

it seems to have nothing to do with me being underwater or not.
I narrowed it down to just transitioning the main player between levels/scenes.

Still causes the system to crash if I revisit the 2nd level more than once.

 

Hi,

Just got this so might be missing a trick, but I suggest you add a few Suimono_surface prefabs, in Large (probably existing), medium, and small (perhaps even tiny).

I know we can scale the X and Z transforms, but doing so creates a very dense (and probably inefficient) mesh when creating small ponds. eg. ponds in the hillside, or seaside rockpools etc - which ideally are at different heights. For each pond one would have a very dense (small) mesh.

So I think it would be way better to start with a mesh more-or-less the right size and scale it a little.
It should be a simple thing to add anyway.

Thx

EDIT: As smaller meshes will be used for ponds etc, it might make sense to create the meshes as round (corners are normally not needed so most of the time will waste tri's). That will also make placing them easier (to not have to hide corners). It will also then be obvious to users they can't be tiled.

 

You can also use your own custom meshes as well. That would be the more 'official' solution that way the waves aren't scaled at all, your mesh would have the correct spacing of vertices instead of trying to scale an existing plane. I had a snippet of code that would make a plane with vertices at intervals and certain width/length, I will see if I can dig that up.

 

Cool thanks. If not don't worry, I should be able to put something together.

Yes aggressive scaling messes movement up.

Also a massive overhead, so I'm sure less dense mesh will help - my FPS went down to around 10 FPS from 40+ - and its only like a 10x6 pond ... but no doubt I can tweak it a bit once I get the hang of the settings. If not and I can't use, it will be a hell of a waste of funds!

I saw in the online doc that we can make our own meshes etc, but not many users are going to be too comfortable with that - and get the UV's right etc. That's why I suggested he include a few smaller sized prefabs - it makes sense and won't take much effort, and certainly will be used by many future users.

 

http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/CreatePlane

The one I have is based loosely on that version. Was looking at my snippet and it was done to integrate into another script so it would be useless in this context, but the code above is what I started with so that should help. Should be able to call that script and assign the plane programmatically, otherwise just make that code work in editor and have it spit out the plane you need at design time and assign it manually. Hope that helps.

 

Great, thanks for that, will have a look at it.

 

Thanks, I have a plane created with ProBuilder (which was mentioned in the doc so I used that). Its 25x25 units with 5 segments in each direction.

However, I'm getting some sort of "tearing" - it looks like tiling thats not stitched, but its animated (moves with waves along "seam"). This is all one surface though, so Suimono must be tiling on it. I haven't found a setting for that yet. See pic :



Will need to sort water colors etc out - this is "Smooth Calm Dark" preset

Note the "tearing" black lines - where one tile has a different mesh animation to the next. Again this is all just one 25x25 mesh.

FPS improved slightly (11.4 instead of < 10), but was around 40+ with Unity water.
So still need to figure out why. But "tearing" is initial problem.



Re FPS, if I make a smaller window instead of full screen, its faster :


Also, the green arrows show some rendering issue. Its in design mode too, but not as bad. Can't see that its an object or anything like that, but may be - will need to investigate more ...






Look forward to changes taking effect in editor! ... right now, need to run it each time to see result of every parameter change!

 

Hmm... Having a lower res mesh does seem like a good idea. Usually it's best to make a custom mesh for your specific needs, but I can see how there's a bit of waste there when using on a small-ish area.

For custom meshes I've used probuilder without issue, BUT you need to pay careful attention to the UV coordinates of the ProBuilder mesh or you'll get the "tearing" effect you describe in your photo. The UVs need to bemapped adjacent to each other as if you were looking straight down at your mesh plane. The tearing is because the uvs are not adjacet, and thus the vertex animations are animating "separately" from each other.

Fortunately ProBuilder has a built-in UV editor which makes this very easy.

EDIT: A similar issue was encountered a while back by another customer on my forum...
http://tanukidigital.com/forum/index.php?topic=497.msg1195#msg1195

 

Ok, thanks for the reply. I'll play with the UV's

 

I haven't had much time to make headway with the custom mesh, so just used the default prefab for now (unscaled else waves look wrong), and it seems to work better.

I've fiddled with the colors to try get the water color I need. But confused as to why the edge foam is black, not the color I'm specifying. Am I missing something, or is it a bug? ...



Also, can we use our own texture instead of foam? ... just thinking it'll be useful to use a debris texture for some pollution etc.

 

The foam ooks pretty dark, but the water also looks dark. Do you have a directional light in your scene? If so you may want to try brightening it up some, as the foam and water depth modulate with the in-scene lighting. If you don't have a light then you should add one.

You can add your own custom foam texture however the shader doesn't treat it as one RGB image, but rather as 4 images broken down by color channel... the included foam texture is specifically authored for this (if you open it up in an image editing program you'll see what I mean )

 

@chingwa : Hi,
I just got Suimono, and trying it in my game, all isee is the white foam... using Unity5.0.1f4 : See the screenshot.

What did i miss ??

 

Hi Feydwin, This is a common problem in the current version with Unity 5. The current fix is to switch your camera to use deferred rendering, and to temporarily turn off image effcts. I'm working on a fix, and it should be ready soon

 

Yes I had the same issue, but the workarounds are not working for me. So looking forward to a fix.

 

Any progress on the fix? When do you expect it to be done?
thx

 

Quick question here. I have it in my scene but trying to figure out why my character walks on top of it. I tried looking through the docs and if I missed it, i apologize.
What did i miss setting up?

 

This is likely a Unity layer issue. Suimono is set to use the "water" layer that's built into Unity, so any other objects in your scene that you want to interact with the water should be on a different layer. Any object that is on the water layer will recognize the water collider, instead of floating/sinking etc.

In other words, make sure your object is NOT on the "water" layer.

 

hmm character is on ignore raycast layer and the Suimono_Surface is on Water layer.
I think it might be something else that is not making it work. and nothing to do with Suimono. I think... lol.

 

Try choosing a layer other than ignore raycast... I'm not positive but this may have special physics stuff happening to it behind the scenes in Unity?

Also, you can always double check Unity's physics settings. Go to Edit-->Project Settings-->Physics and check if the water layer is interacting with anything there. Suimono tries to disconnect the water from all the others automatically, but it doesn't hurt to check.

 

Forgive me if I missed the answer to this above somewhere. I have been following the progress of this asset for a while now and am ready to buy Suimono. However, I can't use it with the errors caused by image effects. I use Time of Day and from discussions I have had with colleagues, it appears that the scattering and some other image effects cause foam to cover the water.

Switching to deferred does not help and the image effects must be removed. Any chance there is a fix in the works? Unfortunately, Unity's water seems to have problems at night and glows brightly no matter what I do.

 

Hi Teila,

Thanks for your continued interest in Suimono There is indeed a fix in the works and I anticipate it being ready very soon. The current version (2.0.6) definitely has issues in Forward and with Image effects in Unity 5, so I would recommend being patient just a bit longer until the next update (2.1) is ready. It addresses all the above issues you mentioned, and also has better integration with the Unity 5 lighting system.

Honestly, it's been so long since I attempted any work with the built-in Unity water that I'm not sure I could recommend a solution for that. I do remember that it did not really react to scene lighting properly, which is inexcusable! If there's one thing I've learned over the development of Suimono and researching water effects is that the lighting is everything to rendering realistic water. You really would need to write your own code to transfer and recalculate the water color/settings based on the state of the Time-of-Day settings, assuming you continue to use the built-in water.

 

I've just implemented this and Tenkoku over a few hours earlier, was relatively painless, including generating my own textures for Suimono with Genetica (strongly recomended - http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/genetica.htm) done quickly for a wip of something some fellows are doing, will have nicer images in a few days when ive had time to play i think

a peek
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12598787/ships.png

 

I have some suggestions, if they'd be welcome justin, here or elsewhere

 

See, this is the problem. I keep reading how we should all use deferred. I use deferred and still get the foam issues. It is the conflict with the image effects, not running in forward that concern me.

Will your fixes handle that as well? Even if I switch to your environmental solution, I still want my image effects. Having to choose between nice water and nice color/scattering just isn't ideal.

I would love to hear a solution is in the works for that problem. Running in forward is great for some, but it doesn't help people like me. We have a Skype group and my guess is that as others in our group who use Suimono or want to use it start adding image effects, there will be more problems.

 

Which image effects are you having problems with Teila? I might be able to help out since im sorta sandboxing with suimono etc atm anyways

 

Hi Lazygunn,

At the moment the problem is the image effects for Time of Day. Both the scattering and the flare cause foam to cover the entire water surface with Suimono's water. From what I read above, there are a number of IE's that are causing problems, probably the same type.

The foam would be great if I wanted a post apocalyptic town but it doesn't work for my medieval river.

 

Oh, the foam is actually my biggest issue with the asset and could be improved i think, and not too hard, it was the thing i was going to suggest changes for, but ive already tried implementing some of my own changes, to varying success. I'll be continuing to tinker with it over the next couple of weeks anyways. I was going to suggest it be blended entirely differently (a clamped add i guess rather than what seems a multiply, in simplest terms), it's its own material more or less meaning its own brdf and opaque should mean opaque and it be lit in its own right so it doesnt feel 'clamped' to some odd value in the murk, should/could contribute to the displacement of a surface i think, or maybe have a parallax effect. And it should be generated on the face normal as much as its height (more vertical water surfaces indicate high energy). And be animated in a better fashion, i think perhaps the texture passed through a 3D/4D gpu-run ridged noise mask (I've already tried this but i think my approach was a bit wrong). I'll be looking at this stuff myself anyways.

I wouldn't worry about this being a long term, speaking for chingwa hes a very conscientious developer and he put a lot of time into this so im sure he wont let it go. I wont let him even if i have to meddle myself haha, i quite like suimono when its looking right

 

@Teila Let me clarify a little... the upcoming update works as expected both in deferred and forward, and all image effects work without issue.

In the current version however, yes the rendering breaks in forward mode, AND the rendering breaks when using image effects that require scene depth (this is regardless of forward/deferred settings).

The issue is not only with the foam, that's just the most obvious visual issue. It also breaks the underlying transparency and depth/fog calculations as well. The reasons for the rendering breaks are because of changes made by Unity in 5.0 to the depth buffer pipeline, and changes made to the internal image effects that access this depth buffer. The previous methods used in Suimono to access the buffer and then calculate foam and depth/transparency simply are no longer up to the task because of the changes made behind the scenes by the Unity folks.

Because of this I've had to completely rethink how these systems are handled in Suimono, in order to be able to work predictably across a variety of different scenes and setups. Suimono 2.1 now calculates transparency and depth separately from the rest of the water surface and they are composited back together afterwards. It's a complicated way of getting the same effect, BUT it has the benefits of...

a) having a smaller/simpler surface shader (It's now 1/3 the complexity of the current version).
b) the base surface is now treated like any normal geometry object which responds properly to scene compositing, depth, and fog.
c) it no longer has to fight to access the internal depth buffer and thus allows image effects to run properly again. This goes for all image effects, not just Unity's standard effects.

I apologize for the time it's taking to get this out to everyone, it's just that the fix for these issues turned out to be much more complicated than I imagined. There are still some bugs here and there, but I'll be posting a preliminary version of 2.1 on my website for registered customers to download and test a little later this week. Promise!

@lazygunn suggestions are always welcome I only ask that you keep any Suimono suggestions here, and any Tenkoku suggestions in the Tenkoku thread, otherwise I might lose track of some stuff. The foam could sure use some improvements, I agree. I've had to mess with the foam in 2.1 in order to get it generating without the depth buffer (essentially, by building it's own scene depth buffer first), but the overall rendering of it hasn't changed much from the current version yet.

 

Thanks for such a detailed reply, Chingwa! So rarely do I get that.

I can wait. I was feeling desperate and frustrated so sorry if I sounded impatient. Just knowing that a fix is coming is enough. I will wait until it is fully tested and stable and work on other things. I did get some pointers on making Water4 bearable in the meantime.

Sounds like this will be a good fix for all.

 

Chingwa said "It also breaks the underlying transparency and depth/fog calculations as well." I noticed that I cannot see the surface (or ceiling of the water, the waver ripples from down below) when underwater except on the most transparent settings, is this the reason why? Also, I know you have a lot on your hands with this current fix, but I am wondering how difficult it would be to put "God Rays" in the water column? I think that along with the other fixes that would make it look AAA ultra realistic, like Cryengine water. I understand if that has to wait for a future version, I am just wondering as I don't think any of the Unity water systems have this yet.

 

@Teila Have a look at tenkoku too. I have used tod a lot and recently started using tenkoku as well. It really does some lovely things with light and scattering. Has a superior cloud system and has weather and sound effects built in as well. Justin is super responsive when you find issues. I have had issues fixed within 24 hrs usually. I believe its also nicely integrated with Suimono, although haven't tested that myself.

 

Thanks, Adam. Customer service with Tenkoku will certainly be better. However, I bought this one so am sticking with it for a bit.

One thing I like about ToD is that he includes these scripts that I can easily drop on lights and rendered objects. I know I can get my programmers to make them for me but it saves us all time to have these available. Also, it is light and keeps my fps humming along even with the addition of heavy things like water.

If those things are true of Tenkoku, I might switch when everything works well.

 

Thanks so much @chingwa for the upcoming fix to foam (and other stuff) in Unity 5! Looking forward to it!

 

Hi guys. Will this product not work at all for mobile? I need to simulate wave interactions for a boat game. I don't need reflections but more realistic wave interactions, wake etc.The water looks great btw!

 

Suimono is much too powerful to be harnessed by mobile devices. You may want to look at a simpler water system. Whatever you get, you should be able to do the wake through a projector and not do any mesh deformation if you want to save some cpu/gpu on mobile.

 

Hello All,

Suimono version 2.1.0 (experimental) is now ready for download...

Download Here: http://www.tanukidigital.com/download

I consider this an experimental version of 2.1 as there are still a few issues with this version that need to be worked out (which I'll go into detail about below), but I didn't want to delay this release any longer since it addresses some serious issues with Unity 5 that many people have been experiencing.


WHATS NEW IN 2.1?
Suimono is now fully compatible with Unity 5... in fact Suimono will REQUIRE Unity 5 starting from this release. This version works both in Deferred AND forward rendering modes, and is now be working properly with image effects once again (these edits should remove all instances of the infamous "foam" error). Suimono shaders and render targets have been simplified and lower end targets like mobile and 'Unity basic' have been removed, as Suimono has been refocused on higher end systems and visuals.

Transparency effects have been off-loaded from the water surface itself and are now calculated separately via a component on the Suimono Module object. This enables the main water surfaces to properly utilize the Unity 5 depth buffer which allows consistent fog and sorting effects with other scene objects. The generated transparency is then combined in the shader afterward. However, you'll need to pay careful attention to what game layers you want the transparency to render. These can be set in the transparency settings on the Suimono Module object.

Shoreline generation has been rewritten and now uses a custom render camera to capture scene depth information on-the-fly. The depth information is utilized to create water depth, water shoreline areas, foam areas, and to calculate edge fading. You'll also need to pay attention to what game layers are allowed for depth generation... these settings can be found in the "General Settings" on each Suimono Surface object.


WHAT STILL NEEDS WORK?
shoreline and foam generation currently has a slight delay in updating as you move around the scene. It's a little annoying, but I'm confidant that I'll have this worked out soon.

Depth, foam, and edge effects do not generate properly on some custom meshes (such as long river meshes for example).

Shoreline waves do not yet inherit physics / height / buoyancy calculations, so for example a boat object will move through the middle of the shore waves, rather than going over top.

The depthmask shader seems to have intermittent issues when used to mask objects that use Unity's new Standard Shader.

"Refraction bleed" issue sometimes noticeable around objects as they face the water.

Caustics generation is using the same method as previous versions. It's a little heavy rendering-wise, and I'm looking at alternative techniques for this.


INSTALLING 2.1
I recommend removing previous versions of Suimono first, and then doing a clean install of version 2.1. The water surfaces have a new component for depth generation (and also have removed the old depth gen objects), and the Suimono Module also has a couple new components and child objects that need to be present in the scene for the system to work without errors.


As always, let me know if you have problems/questions/feedback etc, either by email or on the forums!



UPDATE: 5/25/2015 - Suimono Version 2.1.0 (experimental)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT'S NEW:
- Tenkoku integration in Module gives water access to Tenkoku wind and reflections.
- "Reflection Term" attribute controls incidence of reflection strength. Set by default to 0.255 for most water.
- Improved distant horizon blending with skyboxes.
- Added "Distance Fade Color" setting that optionally fades the distance to a color(reacts to scene lighting).
- Added enable/disable option to Tessellation settings.
- Improved Water edge blending.

CHANGES:
- Simplified shader instructions and variations.
- "Chromatic Shift" setting temporarily disabled.
- "Blur Amount" setting temporarily disabled.
- "Reflection Strength" attribute renamed to "Reflection Distortion".
- New "Unity Version Target" modes added... "Unity DX9" and "Unity DX11".
- Removed listings for previous version targets, including Unity/Unity Pro versions as well as iOS and Android.
- Removed "Use Dark UI" setting. UI colors are now automatically detected based on Unity license version.
- Removed and changed shader references to Unity "Pro" to be "dx9" or "dx11".
- Edited splash effect gravity settings.
- "Depth Color(shallow)" setting has been removed.
- Improved character controller in demo scene.
- Removed "Include Presets in build" option. Preset data is now always included in builds.
- Tessellation controls now moved under "Configuration".

BUG FIXES:
- Fixed Ripple distortion effect.
- Suimono now automatically sets y-scale on water surfaces to "1.0" to avoid setup issues.
- "Flat Plane" setting now properly removes tessellation settings.
- Water surface light attenuation errors for point/spot lights has been fixed.
- Flow Direction setting now works correctly again.
- Fixed issue with startup lag where the water was delayed before rendering on initial play.
- Fixed distant black band in reflections when Suimono is used with skybox assets(Tenkoku, TimeOfDay, etc.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I have general plans to improve the underwater rendering in a future update, as I think I can do much more with it now that Suimono is moving exclusively to Unity 5, and yes GodRays sound like an awesome idea

 

I'm just going to drop this here for @chingwa hehe.

The Witcher 3 water reacts to physics: http://gfycat.com/ConcernedReflectingFrillneckedlizard

 

My thoughts are ... Graphically impressive, but not very realistic.
If you punched the water you'd get a small splash not a grenade explosion.

Most of that looks like something you could get quite far with particles - if you're trying to simulate that effect. And considering the engine we're using - you probably would not want all that built into the physics, or even 'simulated' physics.

Also in the earlier sunset video (very nice), the wind was howling and blowing trees, but smoke from chimneys were not affected. Its funny that in really detailed environments these things stick out even more.

I guess we all wish we could achieve those graphic levels, but then you need to consider the power of the graphics engine and multitude of very talented developers and artists they use.

 

He's not punching the water. He's using a magical kinetic blast called Aard. This skill can be used in-game to knock enemies away if they get too close.

If you actually play The Witcher 3 though, you'll find that it has possibly the most immersive and realistic environment ever accomplished in a game. I'm saying this because characters say 'how was the swim' after you step into the river, characters run inside and complain about rain, and just tons of other quality of life things the developers put into the game to make it feel 'alive' compared to something that is an open world sandbox like Skyrim, which was impressive in its size but filled with tons of 'dead' characters.

The sunset GIF is a sped-up version of a sunset. I'll have to check the smoke again to see if it really was slow or if it just didn't change enough over time to be noticeable in the speed-up.

 

I agree with this asessment. the Witcher3 water has been generally disappointing to me from a technical standpoint, however their integration effects seem VERY well done. Splashes, ripples, kinetic blast effects, etc seem top notch. I haven't played the game, and I've only been analyzing video footage/screenshots, but most if not all of these seem to be carefully crafted particle overlay effects rather than actual water deformation.

Luckily, in Suimono 2.1 the ripple effect has been fixed and is now working properly again, so those who are interested could use it as a template to make their own kinetic blast effects as well

 

Im still turn between wether witcher 3's wakes and ripples are messing with the normals or actually displacement algorithms like Shallow Water Equations

 

That looks excellent !


I was away on the boat for the weekend and thinking about the edges of your water ... I think it would really smart if you could add a much thicker foam right at the edge - thats if its possible and not too expensive to calculate the exact edge - or close to it. I can imagine it might be difficult or expensive (so if you do please add an option to disable it), but I was watching the water at the edge at different locations and noticed in most cases there was a build up of foam density when getting close to edge (which you have), but almost always 100% right at the edge and a sort of foam roll / curve at the end. So if you added it maybe a "Additional Edge Density" between 0 (disable code) to 100%.

Something like this ...


Actually, thinking about it now, probably the better way to do it is with a slower moving seperate shader mesh which slowly withdraws as a foam edge does, and get pushed forward by shore-waves overlapping it. That could be tricky I guess.

 

I just plugged Suimono into a scene generated by my soon to be here terrain system and have to say I am blown away! Together with Tenkoku this is outstanding!!!