Unreal Engine – Advanced Water Material

A fully editable Material Blueprint / Water Material. Optionally uses tessellation and gerstner wave displacement. The included Blueprints can be used for lakes, oceans, tropical environments, and more. You can fully customize the colors, deepness, and opacity of the water, as well as wave normals and wave size. Light refraction is also supported and can be easily configured. You can also set up automatic foam generation on the shore and waves. There is an option to simulate raindrops on the water surface. The Gerstner Wave Material Function allows you to simulate realistic-looking ocean waves. There is also a light version of the Water Blueprint without tessellation / displacement for more performance and speed. Water Caustics can be added using Decals.

Please note that the Material needs some underlying geometry (like a mesh or landscape) to calculate the water depth. For realistic rendering you also need to add a “Planar Reflection” object as shown in the demo scene.

Currently does not work in Forward Shading Mode.

Tested with Realtime Ray Tracing.

NEW: Underwater Feature, Caustics and distance-based Tessellation

rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>Demo Video

rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>Usage Examples Video (Environments in the Video are not included!)

Technical Details

Content:

  • 3 Demo scenes
  • 2 Water Blueprints (with and without Displacement)
  • 2 Water plane meshes (high- and lowpoly)
  • 6 Materials
  • 14 Material functions
  • 8 Material Instances
  • 31 Textures
  • 1 Rain Particle System

Features of the Material:

  • Color setup
  • Light refraction
  • Opacity parameters
  • Foam generation where water gets shallow
  • Metallic factor
  • Ocean waves
  • Small waves
  • Normal strength
  • global Water scale
  • Water Depth
  • Tessellation (optional)
  • Gerstner Settings (optional)
  • Fresnel Setting (reduces texture repetitions)
  • Shore Fade (avoids clipping when water hits objects)
  • Raindrop Speed
  • Raindrop Intensity
  • Raindrop Normal Power
  • Raindrop Scale
  • Coral Reef Texture
  • Coral Reef Scale
  • Coral Reef Contrast
  • Sea Foam Scale
  • Sea Foam Contrast
  • Sea Foam Intensity
  • Underwater Settings

Texture Resolutions:

  • Foam textures: 1024×1024
  • Coral Reef textures: 1024×1024
  • Distortion Textures: 1024×1024
  • Ocean wave textures: 1024×1024
  • Small waves: 512×512
  • Splash Textures: 512×512

Number of Blueprints: 2

Number of Materials: 5

Number of Instances: 5

Number of Textures: 28

Intended Platform: Desktop, not tested on Mobile

: Not included