[Community Project] WIP Weather & Ocean Water Shader

[CrashA51]

Definitely buy the game DotCam and give it a spin. I guarantee you will forget about the gameplay, and just spend all your time looking at and swimming in the water! The SSS in the waves is amazing, and underwater, and the transition, and even the foam, is very well done. I heard, in early development, it was even more realistic, so they stylized it a bit to fit more with the rest of the art direction. They also do a great job of masking, I guess that is what it is, the water out of the ships, then flooding them when they are full of holes. Rare extended the "golden hour" (dusk, dawn) and actually enlarged the sun at that time of day, and it just plays off the water in a way that is beyond description. They had a real attention to detail, because any photographer knows the golden hour is a special time for lighting.

I think their implementation of Light Propagation Volumes for Dynamic GI, and their Lighting Blueprint, contribute a lot to the great look of their water, which changes with the time of day, weather, and even regions. They use over 98 color curves in a single BP. Great solution. I think this would be something that could add value to this project. They smoothly change the color of the water from that Caribbean turquoise to stormy deep blue open water, so quickly. And it looks so good day and night, rain, or bright sun. So the lighting BP must play a key role in the look of their water.

If you haven't yet, I would also take a look at Assassin's Creed Origins.

Black Flag has amazing water, and they published a lot on how it was developed: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/***...th-the-action/ and https://www.fxguide.com/featured/5-t...iv-black-flag/ .... I think Ubisoft assigned the water shader to a division in Singapore. Anyways, Origins takes things on step further. The water displaced by ships, and even when swimming in the water, if facing the sun, you will get a beautiful SSS in the wake. And in Origins you can swim underwater everywhere, and they have different colored water by biome region.

I only mentioned all this because you developers have given a lot of time to this, and I though you might get some inspiration. I never really thought UE4 could produce such beautiful results. This project is so close ... it is looking really good.

After seeing the water in Sea of Thieves, I think the last goal for someone to reach in a water shader, is that "surfable wave" that properly breaks with a nice curl with SSS, with the technically correct and proper looking surf that rushes to shore, with swash and backwash shoreline effects.

Water elements in games has been my favorite part ever since playing BioShock. So developers that write water shaders are my idols. EPIC should give all of you an award, or something, for the work you have put into this project over the years. I hope you guys continue to find the time to work on this, and put the finishing touches on it. Good Things!

[qdelpeche]

Quick question, in order to get a player to float and be able to swim, would you add a buoyancy actor to it and activate it when entering the water?

[DotCam]

Quick question, in order to get a player to float and be able to swim, would you add a buoyancy actor to it and activate it when entering the water?

Hey Q!

Yes a BuoyancyForceComponent is what you will want to add as a child of the character mesh, but currently you do not need to activate it, it will automatically get applied. Come to think of it adding an 'enabled' boolean is a good idea. Looking over the code it is possible to use a "Set Component Tick Enabled" in blueprints on the component, this should have the desired effect. I haven't used it yet but setting up some kind system to auto-disable it shouldn't be too difficult, easiest would probably be checking the players current location on the Z axis, when the character gets near the Z height of the ocean just have it enable the component.

As far as the setup is concerned, here's a couple screenshots of the ThirdPerson demo character in the project. For the bone overrides the second image shows all that are really required, you can add more bones if you want and adjust the values however you see fit. I'm planning on creating a new blueprint for the character that will have a swim setup similar to games like GTA5 and Assasins Creed Rogue where the character 'snaps', for lack of a better word, to the surface but if the camera rotate pitch is push forward long enough the character will start swimming beneath the surface. I just need some swimming animations built for the UE4 third person dude (if anyone is reading this who knows how to create them, and would be willing to contribute them to this project, we would forever be in your debt!) and I'll add them in, will make sure to let you know if I can get an example working.

Here's the screenshots:



Let me know if anything is unclear. Cheers!

[qdelpeche]

DotCam - Thanks for the comprehensive response, it is really appreciated. I have swimming animations but they come from another Marketplace pack, so unfortunately I can't offer them to you.

[DotCam]

DotCam - Thanks for the comprehensive response, it is really appreciated. I have swimming animations but they come from another Marketplace pack, so unfortunately I can't offer them to you.

Happy to help!

Yeah I have some from marketplace too I'm not able to use. My biggest problem is not having a clue how to animate, and I use 3dsMax while it seems all the animation tools are made for use in Maya...

Anyways, no worries Q. I'll either find a way to do it in max or wait for an animation god to bless us with his powers!

[issam1975]

Happy to help!

Yeah I have some from marketplace too I'm not able to use. My biggest problem is not having a clue how to animate, and I use 3dsMax while it seems all the animation tools are made for use in Maya...

Anyways, no worries Q. I'll either find a way to do it in max or wait for an animation god to bless us with his powers!

i haven't tested this package yet but it seems that the animations are retargeted to UE4 and i am pretty sure there is a swimming in it

https://forums.unrealengine.com/comm...o-ue4-skeleton

[DotCam]

i haven't tested this package yet but it seems that the animations are retargeted to UE4 and i am pretty sure there is a swimming in it
https://forums.unrealengine.com/comm...o-ue4-skeleton

Oh! I totally forgot about that one, I downloaded it a few weeks ago but haven't used it yet. I'll have a look through and see if they will work, thank you very much for the suggestion issam1975, really appreciate it!!

EDIT: They do have swimming animations, a lot of them! These are the ones listed in the readme, thanks again!!

Subject #125 (Swimming)
125_01    Breast Stroke
125_02    Breast Stroke
125_03    Break Stroke
125_04    Breast Stroke
125_05    Butterfly
125_06    Free Style
125_07    Motorcycle

Subject #126 (Swimming 2)
126_01    Back Stroke
126_02    Back Stroke
126_03    Breast Stroke
126_04    Breast Stroke
126_05    Breast Stroke
126_06    Fly Stroke
126_07    Fly Stroke
126_08    Fly Stroke
126_09    Fly Stroke
126_10    Free Style
126_11    Free Style
126_12    Free Style
126_13    Motorcycle
126_14    Range of Motion

Plus these three
79_02    swimming
79_03    swimming
80_72    swimming

[issam1975]

Oh! I totally forgot about that one, I downloaded it a few weeks ago but haven't used it yet. I'll have a look through and see if they will work, thank you very much for the suggestion issam1975, really appreciate it!!

EDIT: They do have swimming animations, a lot of them! These are the ones listed in the readme, thanks again!!

Subject #125 (Swimming)
125_01 Breast Stroke
125_02 Breast Stroke
125_03 Break Stroke
125_04 Breast Stroke
125_05 Butterfly
125_06 Free Style
125_07 Motorcycle

Subject #126 (Swimming 2)
126_01 Back Stroke
126_02 Back Stroke
126_03 Breast Stroke
126_04 Breast Stroke
126_05 Breast Stroke
126_06 Fly Stroke
126_07 Fly Stroke
126_08 Fly Stroke
126_09 Fly Stroke
126_10 Free Style
126_11 Free Style
126_12 Free Style
126_13 Motorcycle
126_14 Range of Motion

Plus these three
79_02 swimming
79_03 swimming
80_72 swimming

good news, Happy to help .

[LordEggi2]

Hi, i just downloaded this recently and it looks very good, but how can i trigger the 2D Wave effect? The ThirdPerson Character can step on it and create Waves

[Moore Game Dev]

Nice plugin. I got it to work with world composition but it doesn't save properly because when I reload the editor all of the objects in the World Outliner that are relating to this plugin that I created in my previous session are no longer there. Also I couldnt figure out how to change the water level to something a bit lower. Best regards, James.

[EvoPulseGaming]

Well, lets tell the whole story, before we destroy someone with a promising future here....

I want this crystal clear:
I sent DotCam a copy of OceanX, and he verified it's nearly a 1:1 copy of the ocean shader. Down to the comments by DotCam.
"cause it is not only "inspired" by this project, it is a direct rip off, uses the same meshes, the material functions are the same, even the comments inside the materials are the same"
Not to mention we are noticing copied parts from Theokoles plugins, particularly the buoyancy.
Jonathan has a CURRENT copy of OceanXY on gumroad that is also a near copy, please help report this here: http://help.gumroad.com/contact-us!

This is not a dead project, and tons of work has been put in for a future release. And before anyone argues some fine detail, remember the spirit of this project. FREE
You want to sell it as part of your game? Fine, but don't stitch a bunch of stuff together and claim it yours!

Now for this plug-in and NeOcean ...
NeOcean looked good, really good, on a par with this plug-in I would say... ...Jonathan may have borrowed and built upon a foundation of other's work, but...

Lets be clear again, there is no but. If you improve this plugin, keep to the spirit of the project. Help this project. (You don't have to, but don't sell it as yours)

EPIC shares some of the responsibility. The Marketplace review process failed. They could have told him what to change, and he would have complied. Jonathan was only following their direction and Marketplace release process.

Excuse me? They can't go cross comparing a new asset to every forum thread or project. Thats insane, what they can do, is reject the obvious, and review when reported.
And complied? If he removed all the copied content, there would be nothing usuable left.

And now, we are back where we started years ago. And I suspect, if I check back in two years, we will be on page 290 of the forum, and still no BP implementation of this or any other full feature Ocean water... because the first person that tries, even someone like TK, and the other sellers will run to EPIC, and have it pulled.

There is a reason DotCam moved it out of BP into c++, the same reason the weather simulator got pulled out of BP and back into c++.
The same reason NeOcean was going to go c++ FFT and Physical C ++
https://gumroad.com/l/NeOcean
Also, EPIC does not remove content from the market place because another seller CLAIMS infringment. (DotCam isn't even selling it, so "sellers" is the wrong term) but after they can CONFIRM infringment (Wasn't hard to do, the repo has been up way before Jonathan's stuff came out)
Also, don't blame epic, GumRoad removed NeOcean too!

[Moore Game Dev]

How do you change the sea level please?

[DotCam]

How do you change the sea level please?

If you are referring to the level of the water in your level, just to align it with your landscape, simply select the BP_Ocean actor in level and raise it up using the "move" gizmo.

Is that what you mean?

[Moore Game Dev]

If you are referring to the level of the water in your level, just to align it with your landscape, simply select the BP_Ocean actor in level and raise it up using the "move" gizmo.

Is that what you mean?

Yes that's exactly what I mean thanks. So if I also want the third person character to appear to swim in the sea would I also have to place and raise/lower a "WaterSwimVolume" so that the top of it aligns exactly with the top of the BP_Ocean object?

[DotCam]

Yes that's exactly what I mean thanks. So if I also want the third person character to appear to swim in the sea would I also have to place and raise/lower a "WaterSwimVolume" so that the top of it aligns exactly with the top of the BP_Ocean object?

Actually you don't need to worry about it if you have a BP_Underwater actor in your level and have both the Ocean and Swim Volumes set, you can even set it up so the swim volume follows your character around by enabling it in the BP_Underwater details panel. The BP_Underwater actor will automatically set the swim volume to the same level as the ocean surface.

Just make sure these 2 are set and the Swim Volume extends far enough in your level (or enable the option to have it follow player)


On a side note, there has been a simple fix for a performance gain added to BP_Underwater to prevent it from performing things like the follow and visual updates on Tick unless the character is near the water, it will be in the next update (which will be out very soon!).