It’s 2026 and a water shader still looks like this. Why has Epic not optimized it yet? I would rather not use a single layer water shader if it’s going to be this high on the complexity rating.
A blank water shader with no inputs has 900 base instruction calls and 1000 max sampler on top of the normal material cost.
Make it make sense from an optimization point of view!
What’s wrong with it? Compared to a translucency material it far better/faster. Have you actually profiled it on your target device? It runs fine for me, even on medium spec android devices. That shader complexity view is a rough ballpark to help pinpoint problem materials, not really designed to judge individual material performance.
I wouldn’t use the base water material. Instead I would build the material to the target device specs (ie, reduce texture sampling), but I’ve gotten great results with the single layer water shading model.
I don’t know what I did, but taking apart my water material and putting it back together has taken about 800 calculations off. The visual optimization complexity hasn’t changed any though.
