Surface Waves - Dynamic Rivers, Lakes and Oceans

Ah sorry didn't see that - it looks good! I think i'd like to see it with a higher resolution mesh and possibly the abiity to change strength and radius of the wave making to see more subtle results would be good but i already see it being a good effect for things

 

Still waiting for reply from Unity about the Asset Store, so I decided to have some fun, and add some vegetation to the demonstration scene.

Which had more effect than I originally expected.

The scene seems much larger now, the rapids and waterfalls suddenly look more dangerous and the waves really look like they're moving way too fast. You can also see an obvious downside of having dynamic water when the vegetation is static; some of the trees end up under water without seeming to care.

I also had to replace the default tree billboard shader, to appear later in the render queue than the water, because it doesn't write depth, and would otherwise disappear behind the water. I'm not sure yet if this is a good permanent workaround, but I guess we'll see.



The best part of this experiment is the way it affected my decisions on making the simulation framerate independent. Originally I thought I would have to let the simulation run multiple times per frame, like the physics system, to increase the speed of the simulation when necessary. But now it looks like I can simply make it skip a frame to let it slow down when necessary.

 

Maybe its a new breed of tree?

 

Perhaps, a breed of trees whose leaves become more transparent under water.


Seriously though, I hope I'll have time to make underwater plants sway in the current at some point.

 

I just received a reply from the Asset Store Team; Surface Waves is now available for $80,-.

I'm happy it got accepted . I hope you will find it useful, and hopefully the sales will allow me to continue working on it.

Unfortunately the description has a double message about the minimum requirements (both Unity 4.3.4 Pro, which is what I wrote, and Unity 4.5.0, which was probably added automatically). I did test, and originally develop the asset for Unity 4.3.4 pro, and it should work. But I've e-mailed the Asset Store team about it, in case they had any issues.

 

Very nice, hopefully we can see this in a project of mine in the future

 

Bought it today and just trying it out.
I'm not seeing any water at runtime, not sure what I might be doing wrong.
The new demo does look better!



Should this run in 4.6?

 

Thanks for buying it

Actually, I haven't tried 4.6 yet. It's not available from the website, so I could only test it in 4.3.4 and 4.5 (and 4.5.1).

If the water isn't visible, I think it's probably a depth issue.

The complex water materials require depth information from the camera. So the camera needs to be set to deferred rendering (either through player settings, or on the cameras themselves). I included a component (Camera Depth Checker), which is added to the mesh GameObject by default, it lists cameras that don't render depth, and displays a warning in console if you enter play-mode without depth information. But it seems that it is a bit easy to miss.

I used to render depth using a separate component and camera, but that didn't work quite so smoothly with the scene view. So I'm still looking for a more elegant solution.

 

Hi,
Finding I need to render texture for my terrain height, but not sure how.

EDIT: Whoops, removed info from another plugin.

 

Very impressive

 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Yes, RenderTexture support is required.

The Terrain Height Renderer should automatically render your terrain to a render texture. Make sure the layer your terrain is in, is selected by TerrainHeightRenderer as Rendered Layer.

​

By Default it is set up to render everything, (Rendered Layers: Default), so with a new Wave Simulation it should work without further setup required (The Rendered Layers setting is there for optimization). But perhaps the settings were changed somehow.

 

Hello,

When you change the dimensions, the help says "he WaveSurface mesh group isn't automatically resized yet, so you have to manually delete and re-create the Wave Mesh Group after a resize."

How is this done correctly?

also, when can we expect some more thorough documentation on what all these settings are/do?

 

Hey everyone, I took a small break during the summer, to recharge and to attend GDC Europe. But now I'm back, and looking forward to creating more updates .

I would like to thank those who've purchased a copy of Surface Waves in the Asset Store, because it means I can spend some more time working on improving it!

Hmmm, you're right, that's probably not enough information. I've added the following to the help text:

Which should show up in the help system, the next time I publish an update to the asset store.

But I should probably use a camera aligned mesh, in stead of a static grid, to simplify this kind of setup, and to also reduce drawcalls. That type of mesh would not have to be changed with a change in dimensions.

I've tried to put explanations of settings in the tooltips for those fields in the inspector. And when that's not enough, I try to put it in the help system.

But obviously there's also the problem that I've seen these settings so often that my automatic reaction is often: "Well, it says what it does, right?", which is unlikely to always be accurate. So if you could point me to things that make no sense to you, or someone on your team, please let me know so I can try to make it easier to use. I would personally prefer to improve the usability of the tools themselves, over writing another layer of documentation.

When I can, I try to test the toolset with other people, to see where they get stuck the most, but right now I only know a few developers nearby, who I can visit for proper playtests. So if you happen to live near Amersfoort (The Netherlands), and would like to participate in a test, please let me know.


For the code documentation: I'm using XML comments all throughout the toolset, so MonoDevelop should automatically show tooltips with the information about every method, and it's possible to generate documentation from it. Unfortunately the last time I tried this with the sandcastle documentation generator, it created pages which were horrible to navigate, and I didn't feel like it was worth it yet. I would like to create a better generator at some point, but I don't think that's where I should invest time right now.

 

this looks amazing been playing around with the demo only think i can see is that the foam is very low quality

 

i was thinking how much that will be cool on android games, try improving performances.
Edit: that's cool! fluid damping a 300:

 

Well I have been playing with this a fair bit after purchase and its pretty awesome! I have some issues with the water shaders, however I think that is due to my laptop (HD4200u).

Keep up the great work and thankyou for the response!

 

Thanks!

Yeah, I agree. I hope I'll get round to flow mapping soon, because that would allow for foam textures, in stead of pure simulation data. But I usually use graphics features work as a reward for finishing other stuff, so it's not first on the TODO list.

What kind of issues are you seeing? I know some GPU's don't handle the depth based effects all that well, and I'm trying to find suitable workarounds, but if you could send me a screenshot of the problem I might be able to help you.

Thanks!

 

I actually haven't even been able to test it on Android, because I only have a regular Android license. If I can try it out at some point, it'll be interesting to do some profiling to see how it compares to the costs on Desktop computers.

Hehehe, yeah, I love breaking the whole thing with extreme settings ^_^. Long (more than .5) timesteps can also give trippy results.

(Repeatable Steps > Wave Flow Step > Delta Time. It's locked to a 'sensible' range by default, but if you put the inspector in debug mode, you can mess with it to your heart's content)

 

I love this asset!

Its a fantastic system that just works! Here ive placed a single source that covers the entire simulation and add a tiny amount (0.00015~) like its raining. The sim nicely creates rivers that go away or build up depending on the intensity.
(there are a few constant streams)

I also added a slight variance to the source output to create constant waves on the surface. livens the simulation up alot!

 

Thanks for your video! It's great to see Surface Waves being used .

 

I will be keeping up with your developments with a keen eye for sure! I am hoping to use this to provide dynamic water to my game!


Some wishlist items :
Higher quality and more configurable foam / shoreline
realtime reflections / refractions
Better 1st person water shader support (it gets wonky at hard angles, would be fixed by above im sure)
Velocity zones for creating waves/movement
Wave input/output method calls
Ability to "link" 2 simulations (say a river and the ocean as two seperate zones)
Minimum Water level (for oceans / etc. prefills the entire sim up to this height and drains to it)

I noticed if you have overhanging items and water below attempts to go "below" the object water rises up. Obviously some sand below to stop the water reaching would fix it, but still it would be better if it didnt climb

 

Some of your items are on my wishlist as well, on the issue tracker. Although I haven't added all requested features there yet, but you can vote for, comment on, and follow issues there as well.

I hope to make higher quality foam possible with flow mapping at some point. What would you like to configure? Or perhaps it's easier to answer: what kind of effects you would like to see?

Agreed, would be cool.

Yeah, the refractions are a rough approximation. But I'm not sure yet how to solve in a relatively cheap way. Since realtime raytracing isn't really an option yet, I guess I should just reduce the offset with the view angle. [edit] I've added this to the issue tracker.

The waves don't have velocity, only forces between neighbouring cells (pixels), so this isn't very straightforward (It estimates velocity after the simulation is done, for things like foam). But I think I might find some solutions when I'm working on top-down water displacement. And I would definitely like to have different kinds of forces.

What exactly would you like to do that can't be done with standard Unity scripting? For example, placing inputs where you need them, and controlling their input.

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using CodeAnimo.SurfaceWaves;
3.  
4. public class WaveInputMethodCall : MonoBehaviour {
5.  
6.    public float intensity = 0;
7.    public WaveSource waveInput;
8.  
9.    protected void Update () {
10.      if (waveInput != null){
11.        waveInput.inputIntensity = this.intensity;
12.        waveInput.transform.Translate(1,0,0);
13.      }
14.    }
15. }

Or well.. as soon I've fixed the bug I just found where they still input waves when their intensity is set to 0. (The Gizmo updates correctly, but the input shader still draws to the input/output map)

Definitely necessary. It requires several other systems to be updated first though, so it might take a while before this is done.

It is already possible to set a starting map that the simulation should use, but it's not very straight forward yet, because I haven't implemented cross-platform saving yet.

On the GameObject 'Surface Waves' > 'Repeatable Steps' > 'Wave Height Step', there should be a 'Step State Manager' Component. When its Start Map texture is empty, it'll use a completely black (flat) texture, but you can also use a texture from a previous simulation as input.

Unless you do the same for the matching flowmap on the 'Wave Flow Step' GameObject, the first few frames will look a little rough as forces are calculated from scratch, but the level should be filled with water.

When cross-platform saving is done, this should be as easy as letting the simulation run for a while, hitting save, and then using the saved textures as Start map values.

Yeah, it handles overhangs just like there were hills. Because height is just handled as a source of pressure (just like physics engine constraints are usually just really stiff springs), and the barrier between the high overhang and the low terrain is just a single pixel in the simulation texture, tiny amounts of water might end up on top of the overhang. And to keep the transition from waves to a lack of waves near shorelines smooth, the wave mesh will try to stay slightly below the terrain at all times. Normally this isn't visible because fragments of the waves that are below a certain level (0.01 by default), are automatically thrown away. But because of texture filtering blending the height values with those at the bottom of the cliff, that is not the case on top of the cliff.

At least, that's what I think is going on in your screenshot. I'm not sure yet how to fix it in a more elegant way. [Edit] Added to issue tracker

 

Thanks for the full on answer! You make me eager to see what else your going to bring!

I am looking for a dynamic water system for a survival game I am developing. I need a system that covers the entire "world" and allows rivers, oceans, waves and accumulation. Your system here is spot on in most ways already!

for the foam I find that I never see enough on the edges of rivers. When a river is going down a slope with a constant flow, the speed of the water on the edges (the shallow areas) would foam up due to the terrain "micro" features. If you variate the flow of the river with a basic random you get little waves with foam, that can create a decent effect, but you need to push foam to a pretty high value.
It would also be great if any change in shallow water causes a bit of "shoreline" foam effect with more change = greater effect.

With regards to the minimum water level I was thinking more along the lines of a set simulation limit, so even during runtime a drain cannot reduce the water below this level. It was just a thought

Sorry I didnt realise you had a tracker thingy like that. I will spend some time tomorrow to report/suggest


--edit--
Im going to try linking a globally sized source to my rain system and sync RTP water to it too

 

The problem with more foam in shallow water is that there are a lot of places were there is a tiny amount of water going down the hill without it being all that visible. Usually it's even blended away with the soft-shore effect. If there's foam in all the shallow areas, you get a lot of unexpected foam. The foam right now is focussed on the bubbles you'd get in deep water.

I'm guessing you are looking for the foam you see on a beach when there is a lot of organic matter in the water. That usually also stays when the water is already gone. So I feel like that would a separate simulation layer.

Hmmm, a threshold for drains is interesting. I'll add it to the tracker.

 

Hi your plug in looks promising, have you thought about underwater shaders and underwater effects? Also will a character walking through the water effect the surface? Does e.g.a boat move to the waves, float buoyancy?

 

I'd love to make underwater effects, but it'll be quite a while, because it requires updates in several other systems first. The kind of waves caused by floating objects will be in sooner, because it's very similar to the way the terrain displaces the water right now.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to work on Surface Waves this week. But I should be able to get some fixes out next week. After that I'm going to look into adding new functionality again.

 

RC-1290,
I have the Surface Waves, but it is a bit hard to understand. Also, How do you get the rivers to keep flowing like in your video? The water eventually comes to a standstill every time I use it. I've trying using the drain as well, but it doesn't seem to actually drain anything. It just makes the water go around it.

Otherwise, its a really nice program. I love how the water cascades around smoothly. so much better than having a flat plane with a moving texture on it!

 

Try varying the input/output intensities to simulate the fluctuations you see in real water. I have added the wave input turbulence component for that. It animates the input intensity of a wave source over time, by blending the value to a randomly chosen value in a given range. You can also use Unity's built-in Animation View.

As for why this happens: There is no turbulence built into the simulation itself, so when inputs and outputs stay the same, the water ends up finding a balance, and it all seems to be static.

Are there any other confusing issues you ran into? It can imagine it looks a bit complex at first, because it uses so many different components, but I tried to use standard Unity functionality wherever possible.

 

Surface Waves looks amazing. Is it available for Unity 4.5 free version or only Unity Pro? Hard to tell from the Asset store.

 

You need Unity Pro 4.3.4 or higher. You need Unity Pro because it makes heavy use of RenderTextures, which are currently only supported in Unity Pro.

Unfortunately, the asset store automatically added a line about 4.5 being required because that's what I used to upload it. But I developed and tested it in Unity Pro 4.3.4, and added that requirement notice before uploading it. That is why there is a double notification.

 

Thanks for clarifying !

 

I have a question. Does this require unity terrain to use? or can you use this water with your own geometry exported from a 3d package?

 

You don't need Unity Terrain. It supports anything that a unity camera can render the depth of.

 

I've only tried the demo, but I like where this plugin is going. The water movement looks amazing! Would love to see this with some textures or normal mapping applied. Right now, it looks a bit too smooth I think, especially close up.

Like others have mentioned I'd also like to slow down the flow of waves more. Lowering damping unfortunately also seem to kill the waves earlier, so the best would be if we could keep the same amount of waves, but just slow the speed down.

Added this to my wishlist. Keep up the great work!

 

A quick update.
There are a lot of things that I would like to improve, but unfortunately selling Surface Waves is not enough to cover all my costs right now, and to really move forward, I would have to invest a significant amount of extra time. So I'm currently focussing on third party work. I look forward to coming back to this project when everything has stabilized.

 

Hi sorry to hear but good luck on your 3rd party work.

 

Getting this error when importing to Unity 5.0b22.

MissingComponentException: Box collider trigger required
CodeAnimo.SurfaceWaves.Dimensions.FindTriggerOnGameObject () (at Assets/Code Animo/Surface Waves/Simulation Core/Dimensions.cs:76)
CodeAnimo.SurfaceWaves.Dimensions.UpdateTriggerDimensions () (at Assets/Code Animo/Surface Waves/Simulation Core/Dimensions.cs:81)
CodeAnimo.SurfaceWaves.Dimensions.set_resolutionX (Int32 value) (at Assets/Code Animo/Surface Waves/Simulation Core/Dimensions.cs:27)
CodeAnimo.SurfaceWaves.Dimensions.OnValidate () (at Assets/Code Animo/Surface Waves/Simulation Core/Dimensions.cs:66)
​

 

Hmmm, unfortunately I can't test Surface Waves in Unity 5 right now, but it seems that the required Box Collider component is either not created, or can't be found.

How did you create the simulation? (It should be added by the buoyancyManager when you create the simulation from the menu, GameObject > 3D Object > Wave Simulation)

Have you tried adding a Box Collider to the root node?

 

anyone has tried on android/ios ?

 

Trying to use this in Unity 4.6.1f1 (not pro). I've added the default surface waves object to an existing scene. The scene has no terrain, (it's all sea, no land, everything happens on the sea/air, so I don't need anything under water or stick out of it except floating things). I have DX11 enabled. I did try this with the default surface size but have also tried re-sizing it, are there some steps to make it behave after that?).

I have just one camera (mostly default settings but with high far value because I want to see stuff a long way off). I have tried fiddling with a few settings but can not get rid of this warning from one of your scripts and I have been unable to get anything to do anything other than show a completely flat surface:

"One of your cameras is not set up for use with depth-based effects."

Camera:

Clear Flags: Skybox
Background (dark blue, low alpha)
Culling Mask: Everything
Projection: Perspective
Field of View: 60
Clipping Planes

Near: 0.3
Far: 100000​

Viewport Rect: X=0 Y=0 W=1 H=1
Depth: 0
Render Path: Use Player Settings
Target Texture: None
Occlusion Culling: No
HDR: No​

I expect it will be a simple answer obvious to someone?

Note; it would be really nice to have a few simple test scenes (with / without terrain) in with the asset and some step by step instructions. It would be so easy to do presumably and helpful. I'm surprised you don't just include the demo scene from your video, that would be nice.

 

"Have you tried adding a Box Collider to the root node?"

Sorry, not gotten back to it, yet.

 

OK, sort of got it going in Unity 5.

There seem to be some unexpected results, for example, I have a ship not moving and the water is going up the sides of it, (the ship's are just a mesh, no colliders or anything like that).

Another example, I have a helicopter 40m above the water and I get intermittent spikes of water reaching up to it (even though it's well above the water).

When I have a moving ship the water reaches way too high to be realistic to the extent that it washes over the deck at speed when that would not happen especially as I've not even got any other sources for waves yet.

The image shows all 3 problems, the nearest ship is doing 10Km/h the ship in the background is not moving, the helicopter (with the spike of water going up to it) is hovering slowly at 1 Km/h 40m above the water. The surface waves asset size in use is the default 512x512 (mainly because I've not figured how to change that properly yet).


Other things that might be factor in what I'm seeing; there's not any terrain, (endless sea for this scene as it needs no terrain at present). The brown in the background above is where the water surface default size runs out, (i.e. just empty grid from the inspector showing my play mode colouring).

So is this one thing overlooked by me or a whole bunch of stuff or is this what I should expect from the way this asset works?

 

The simulation heavily relies on RenderTextures, so you need Pro. In Unity 5, that is also available in the free version, so I'm considering doing a proper port.

 

Very nice. I expect the lighting is weird in non-legacy mode. At least with the fancier water.

I currently only have topdown water displacement built in. So, all objects in the layer selected by the Terrain Height Renderer (Surface Waves Game Object > Frame Start Steps > Terrain Height Renderer > Rendered Layers) are used as terrain, which is why you see the water walls towards the ship sides and the helicopter.

You can change the resolution of the simulation in the dimensions component on the main gameObject. The built-in FAQ (there are two buttons for it on the same gameObject, at the top and the bottom) has more information about this.

It should work fine without a terrain. It'll just use a flat surface beneath the simulation by default.

No, this is simply a problem with me running out of time before I could implement the features that you need (Unfortunately I had to prioritize third party work). But I'm closer to being able to do some more work on this now, especially now that Unity 5 turns out to support RenderTextures in all versions.

 

Thanks for the reply. Any idea on how soon you anticipate an update?

 

I'm afraid not. I'm considering putting some more time in this weekend, now that Unity 5 makes Surface Waves reachable for every user, but I can't promise any release date at this point.

 

I was wondering if this plugin would work with terrain thats being dynamically modified mid-simulation.

 

Yes. Terrain Height renderer creates the height texture map. By default it is called before every simulation step.

 

I have been thinking of purchasing this asset for quite a while now. I would like to know if I can change the surface of the water to something that looks more like real water? If I can make the water look good, and realistic, then I will purchase it, even though the future of this asset looks uncertain at his time.

 

Online demo tested: i7 / Win7 x64sp1 / nvidia GeForce 680M / 32 GB RAM
FPS = 5
How can the FPS be improved?