Hi everyone,
I’m working with Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and using the built-in Water system to simulate realistic water in my scene. However, I’m encountering a strange issue with the water properties when interacting with the Scene view camera. Specifically:
- Water Properties Disappear:
When I move the camera backward or to the left/right in the Scene view, properties such as water decals, foam, and waves completely disappear. They reappear when the camera is in a specific position, but I cannot determine what triggers the disappearance.
- Limited Display Area:
Additionally, there seems to be a limit on how far the water decals, foam, and waves can be seen. They only appear around the central area of the water object and do not extend across the entire surface. This results in an incomplete or inconsistent water effect when moving through different areas of the scene.
Questions:
- Is there a known limitation in HDRP with water properties like foam and waves not rendering correctly at a distance or in certain camera positions?
- Could this be an issue with the water object’s LOD (Level of Detail) settings or a specific HDRP rendering feature?
- Is there any way to ensure that these water properties are visible over the entire surface, no matter the camera position?
Camera Feeds - OutdoorsScene - Windows, Mac, Linux - Unity 6 (6000.0.28f1)_ DX12 2024-11-28 11-20-51.zip|attachment (27.2 MB)
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Yes, you are right, i am facing the same issue.
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Hey, what you are experiencing is simply limitations of how the system is implemented.
Let me try to explain.
Water decals are applied in world space, the decals are stored in an atlas and then projected onto an area. So that means we need an area where they are going to be applied. With a large area, each pixel of your texture will take more surface (larger texels) thus you will lose resolution. This is why we can’t have an inifinitely large area because we would need an infinitely large texture.
Additionally, there’s only one area now for all water feature (deformation, foam, current… etc). This area by default is tied around the camera (if nothing is set in the region anchor), meaning if you move around your scene the zone will follow you allowing you to have always the same definition around you. It’s still possible to anchor this area to a gameobject and make it fixed if needed (like if you don’t want large deformation to disappear around you if you go too far).
Lastly, to alleviate this limitation, you can change the region size in the water decal section of your water surface component, but keep in mind, the larger the area, the lower the resolution you will have on it. Sometimes it can be useful to smooth out a pixelated texture for example. You can use the debug views (at the bottom of the water system component) to check how large this area is.
And if you didn’t already, check out the water sample in the sample tab of the HDRP package in the Package Manager, there’s lots of example of how water decals can be used.
Hope this helps.
