Unity Water sucks terribly

Unity Engine
1

Hi all, sorry for the title, but I hoped to get some attention with it. Fact is all Unity water I see looks terrible, even in asset store addons and the youtube showcases of creators I watched. Since I am still pretty new, I would be the wrong person to give a final judgement like in the title :slight_smile:

It might be that I looked in the wrong places. So instead of having a thread about how terrible water looks, I am more hoping for constructive tips from people who managed to create cool water. In other words who prove my title wrong :slight_smile: I am grateful for any hints how to make cool water.

2

I can’t tell you how to make cool water but I can tell you that you are definitely very wrong :wink:

3

Let us say it does not look terribly realistic. However, I agree that Unity does better with sea than with inlandwater, like ponds and rivers etc.

4

Is that actually Unity water, or a different shader/solution?

5

What is “Unity Water”? It’s not one of Unity’s out of the box provided solutions if that’s what you mean.
It might by SUIMONO 2 from the asset store.

6

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-Water.html
That perhaps?

7

yes well, the water that is described in the docs sucks indeed, lol. Else I would not write here to ask how to get cool water.

8

Asset store is the easiest way, but if it’s for a more specific purpose you either need to do research, (lots of games out there have presented their water lately), and recreate, or hire someone to do it for you.

9

Put it in the freezer :sunglasses:

Can you link a video to show what kind of water you are looking for?

1 Like
10

Using the water provided by Unity in the latest version seems to have bugs with it. I have a feeling no one goes back to fix up a lot of the assets they have previously provided in earlier versions. Another example is that if you use the prototype packages one of the prefabs is broken out the box.

11

The reason water would look terrible would be down mainly to the art skills of the person creating the water rather than necessarily the engine itself. That being said, I haven’t gone into a huge detail on water shaders and the like so I don’t know if Unity has quality limitations and so on especially in regards to the personal edition.

I do know however that when it comes to 2D art related graphics in particular like shaders, normalmaps, texturing, that is all down to not only your eye and making it look realistic through the settings but also just basic drawing skills. One thing I did for a good few years now for my education to help me finish games and 3D models in particular was learn all sorts of 2D drawing and learn about anatomy and lighting.

This has helped me a huge amount in creating nice effects, I am currently experimenting with bumpmapping and normalmaps right now on a 3D character I’m making and it would have looked like absolute garbage if I hadn’t taken the time to learn the skills necessary to make it all pretty.

The thing to bear in mind is that shaders and textures in particular I’ve noticed are pretty much a 3D optical illusion, so if you don’t get it damn near perfect then no matter what you’re going to do it’s going to look garbage which is why the 2D knowledge is so important because if you’re just messing around with no skills learned then you’ll never get it right.

Even in games like Fallout 4 and so on, if you check certain bits of art at all angles, grass shaders being the quite noticeable one for me. You’ll immediately see that it looks incredibly flat and odd because the artists clearly missed out that little patch or they just couldn’t be bothered finishing it off to make it look good at all angles.

That being said for all my ranting about 2D art skills, gameplay and the game just being fun is always way more important than nice water shaders.