Underwater environment breakdown

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1

It has come to my attention that some here could use help with their underwater scenes.
So, as a favor to the community and to those out there who aren’t sure how to make good looking underwater scenes, I challenged myself to create an underwater scene in under an hour, using only default assets and free packages. I took screenshots of my process and documented the steps.
Webplayer

Step 1:
Sculpt up basic terrain

Step 2:
Paint basic Splatmap

Step 3:
Add some grass(Seaweed) and rocks. Nothing fancy here, just the basic assets

Step 4: (very important)
Add an appropriate colored fog with a high density

Step 5:
Add Unity’s basic water prefab above

Step 6:
Add some particle effects (I used the default dust storm, along with a quick plankton emitter that I created)

Step 7: (very important)
Adjust lighting color and strength. Remember: when light filters through water, it takes a slightly bluish tint by the time it reaches the bottom, which leads me to my next step

Step 8:
Add caustics. This step was by far the most complicated and time consuming, but I’ve created a Unity package with everything you need to drag and drop caustics into your scene. You can download my package here.

Step 9:
Post FX

Caustics package
Webplayer

Kudos :slight_smile:

3 Likes
2

Thank you, I’m now trying to make something of your tutorial, but I’d (and others, I guess) appreciate if you describe each step more detailed. Like, which postFX to use, which colors to use, how to create for and what settings to use for it and so on…

If I’ll make something, I’ll post the result :slight_smile:

3

Unfortunately, as I’m newbie, I’ve made crap -_-
You really need to write a more detailed tutorial, please :c

4

This is fantastic

5

Hi，Have you finished the tutorial？I

6

Would it convenient foe u to send a copy of this project? Thanks in advance.

7

Hi, it won’t be really convinient, but why?
And I finished it, yeah, if you can say so…

8

yeah,I finish it too,but it seems that is not as good as the author do

9

Wait, there’s a tutorial? I only see the screenshots, web player link (which is awesome btw) and caustics package.

10

Not a tutorial, more of a guideline. See the top post, steps 1 through 9. Not sure why this is so confusing, but if anyone has specific questions, feel free to post them here. :slight_smile:

11

I tried the webplayer and it looks incredible! How would you go about only adding the effects when you actually are underwater? Simple mark the water as a trigger and then make a script to activate at the trigger?

Thanks for the help,
NickHaldon

12

Thanks for sharing first of all.

I may check this out later on.

13

The problem is … in the web player your effects and all continues to be outside of the water as well… i wouldnt like that…You have any solution?

14

add a collider? should be easy enough to detect when the users head/camera collider hits the water that the effects are changed?

or i dont like this way but you could use a bool and determine are you above or below sea level, but that may not work properly is you have a bit of terrain that is “below” sea level

15

Do you still have the caustics package available? The link doesn’t work.

1 Like