[Community Project] WIP Weather & Water Shader

[finwefeanor]

@OptionalSteve;675354

@, thank you for project, I’ve gotten a lot of good use out of it so far. My biggest and really the only one I haven’t been able to solve is the surface clipping through the hulls of my ships.

I’m able to use the distance field opacity mask to mask out the approximate shape of my hulls:

http://i.imgur.com/arwUGDW.jpg

But it’s an imperfect solution. When the boat rolls on the waves clipping can occur, and sometimes it’s impossible to correctly shape the mask to the hull. So a few questions:

1.) Is there a better way to generate the distance field required for the mask? Such as using the mesh distance fields that are generated for DFAO.

2.) Is there any way to use a mesh as the source for the mask, or some solution that doesn’t involve distance fields?

3.) In the material there is a non-functioning wave displacement section. If it was to function, would it solve the clipping?

4.) Will the interactive water heightfield in your upcoming FFT be able to solve the clipping problem?

Also multiplying the opacity mask right at the end of the opacity pipeline seems to break the rest of the opacity settings, is there any way to fix that?

Hey , have you been able to solve your ? And did you see anyone TK, or someone else pointed out problem in the topic ? I did some search but only related post was yours. I see you did some workaround but what is the best way to get rid of clipping through the static meshes ?

and also i wonder how many test points are you using and what are the radius and mesh weight for kind of small boat if results have satisfied you for a realistic buoyancy ? I mean it’s ok and easy for big ships like manowar but when you tweak small boats like its difficult to achieve same goal. it seems often behave realistic on calm water but when you test it in oceanstorm map, not only waves swallow boat easily, also it sometimes thrown away from the waves.

[Sitrec]

@WixZ;731741

The TrueSky node is actually doing exactly what it should and the problem it caused on your water is in fact fully fixed. The smaller holes you are seeing are caused by the fact that Unreal engine is a deferred renderer which has serious issues with rendering layered transparency. There is a “workaround” to “fix” though but it comes at a cost. A cost of having to render your twice, meaning you will need to place your mesh inside your level at the exact same coordinates twice. One has your normal shader he other will act as a depth buffer rendered at a seperate depth channel which you then have to call from your shader and use as a mask to hide the backside of each wave. also means that he back of each wave will also be fully opaque, but there is yet another fix for that if you use custom refraction by utilizing your scene color which does allow you to create fully transparent water material with no sorting issues but if you want to know more about that just ask.

These are the nodes you will need in your shader: (Note I did not come up with fix, It was provided by someone on the and is also included in the community project)

Custom node:

Then you’ll want to make a depth buffer material to apply on your second mesh. Inside material should be your wave displacement and pretty much nothing more. Might want to tweak some settings to make it as lightweight as possible as all material needs to do is render to a custom depth pass, nothing more. Then apply material to your second waterplane mesh and make sure the waterplane mesh is set to render to custom depth pass:

That’s it. The sorting issues will be gone, but your water just got twice as expensive to render.

There are probably better ways to deal with but I have no idea how. Well I guess you could switch to forward rendering, but that has other issues and limitations that don’t weigh up against the pros of defered rendering. If anyone knows of some other fix for sorting, feel free to correct me.

Perfect, thank you for taking the time to help out! Really appreciate it.

[WixZ]

@Sitrec;732316

Perfect, thank you for taking the time to help out! Really appreciate it.

No problem.

[anonymous_user_006846561 (anonymous_user_00684656)]

hello I’am new here.
I’am trying to remove distortion efect when underwater but didn’t have any luck.
has anyone know how to turn it off

[jtn191]

@Ezioauitore.hd, try editting “PP_Underwater”

My question:
As I complete noob to UE4, I’ve been able to get the and skydome to work. Thank you everybody for your work on project! I can’t, however seem to figure out how to get the Buoyant Actor to work. How would I go about making a sphere mesh buoyant?

[Jackseno]

@finwefeanor;731964

Hey , have you been able to solve your ? And did you see anyone TK, or someone else pointed out problem in the topic ? I did some search but only related post was yours. I see you did some workaround but what is the best way to get rid of clipping through the static meshes ?

and also i wonder how many test points are you using and what are the radius and mesh weight for kind of small boat if results have satisfied you for a realistic buoyancy ? I mean it’s ok and easy for big ships like manowar but when you tweak small boats like its difficult to achieve same goal. it seems often behave realistic on calm water but when you test it in oceanstorm map, not only waves swallow boat easily, also it sometimes thrown away from the waves.

Hey there, I’m interested in finding out if anyone else here has had any luck getting small boat buoyancy settings looking good too - I’ve spent a few days messing with density settings and test points and am having similar problems.

[ipninichuck]

I have seen a few posts that state 4.16 is not supported yet, but a few seem to mention that it is possible to use the plugin with 4.16. Can anyone provide clarification, and any steps needed to make it work properly. So far I cannot get it to work in 4.16.

[ipninichuck]

@Johnathan Light…I am interested to see how your transparency system works and any other additions you have made to your ‘Physical Water Surface’. Tempted to switch over to your product, especially as the implementation is all BP.

[StarGameStudio]

@light;736980

[FONT=Arial Black]Hello, I would like to announce that I am going to open a forum for the integration of transparency in water and many more new features that I have integrated, since I have improved my technique, please those who are interested say below comment if they vote for the revelation Of my method.

(Physical Water Surface)

[MENTION=649824]light[/MENTION] - I’m interested too!!

[anonymous_user_2007c67a]

@Jackseno

The buoyant mesh component included in the project works way better for smaller boats (and even bigger ones IMO) than the test points buoyancy. It uses a completely different type of logic for buoyancy and is more physically accurate. Here’s where it’s first introduced (ignore the part about the separate OceanProject version, it’s since been included in the project).

As far as solving the clipping, I’ve been using a combination of the surface mask (that you can see in one of the demo levels) and the “mesh lens” technique I described earlier. Both solutions have their problems and I’m working on a more perfect solution, I’ll post here when it’s finished.

[johnfg10]

@ipninichuck i have made a 4.16 branch https://.com/johnfg10/OceanProject which has it all setup and ready to go

[ipninichuck]

@johnfg12;737237

@ipninichuck i have made a 4.16 branch https://.com/johnfg10/OceanProject which has it all setup and ready to go

Thank you so Much!!! You have brightened my day.

[plangton]

First of all thanks for doing great project and sharing it.
secondly I wanted to share a possible bug I have found. if you adjust the camera somewhere exactly around the surface of the water, somewhere between the waves a half sphere appears
here is a screen shot i got from one of the maps in your project without touching anything in it

[unit23]

@light;737616

Here is a demonstration

Going to test soon. Thanks Jonathan!

Only thing missing are beach waves … THe market pack Beach Water uses a spline, which needs to be setup around the island shore.

[speedpacer]

Anyone know how to set the Terrain Material Instance Parent at run-time in C++?

[Thijs_Linssen]

@WixZ;731741

The TrueSky node is actually doing exactly what it should and the problem it caused on your water is in fact fully fixed. The smaller holes you are seeing are caused by the fact that Unreal engine is a deferred renderer which has serious issues with rendering layered transparency. There is a “workaround” to “fix” though but it comes at a cost. A cost of having to render your twice, meaning you will need to place your mesh inside your level at the exact same coordinates twice. One has your normal shader he other will act as a depth buffer rendered at a seperate depth channel which you then have to call from your shader and use as a mask to hide the backside of each wave. also means that he back of each wave will also be fully opaque, but there is yet another fix for that if you use custom refraction by utilizing your scene color which does allow you to create fully transparent water material with no sorting issues but if you want to know more about that just ask.

These are the nodes you will need in your shader: (Note I did not come up with fix, It was provided by someone on the and is also included in the community project)

Custom node:

Then you’ll want to make a depth buffer material to apply on your second mesh. Inside material should be your wave displacement and pretty much nothing more. Might want to tweak some settings to make it as lightweight as possible as all material needs to do is render to a custom depth pass, nothing more. Then apply material to your second waterplane mesh and make sure the waterplane mesh is set to render to custom depth pass:

That’s it. The sorting issues will be gone, but your water just got twice as expensive to render.

There are probably better ways to deal with but I have no idea how. Well I guess you could switch to forward rendering, but that has other issues and limitations that don’t weigh up against the pros of defered rendering. If anyone knows of some other fix for sorting, feel free to correct me.

sorry for the big quote

I’m looking to combine the TrueSky plugin with .
Results thusfar are that the is sort of black.
Could you maybe explain (in a sort of noob ue4 language) how I can set up?
]

would be a great help

[unit23]

@light;737616

…

Is there a ready plugin version available yet for 4.16? Are these palm tree, the coastal erosion, the sk, and the landscape material features part of the update?

[DiuxKira]

@;738473

Is there a ready plugin version available yet for 4.16? Are these palm tree, the coastal erosion, the sk, and the landscape material features part of the update?

Hello, my pleasure, all these integrations were made by me.

[plangiewicz]

Hello mates
Two days ago I just started to read project and I want to understand algorythm, because I want to write simple water in c++, but i don’t know few things…

1. Why there are 2 sets of waves
2. Why there are 8 waves in set
   I really don’t know
   And maybe someone know any articles with water physics/shaders theory?

[anonymous_user_beae5721]

I don’t know if I missed something, but is there a post explaining how to install plugin? Also, I’m using 4.16, and I can’t seem to figure out what exactly to download