Use the Water System in your Project

This page provides an overview of the basic workflow to include a water surface simulation in your project, along with three configuration examples that may help you better understand how to adjust water properties to meet your needs.

A basic water workflow

Enable water in the HDRP Asset's Quality settings

  1. Open the Project Settings.
  2. In Quality > HDRP, open the Rendering section.
  3. Enable Water. To run the water simulation on the CPU, see Scripting in the Water System.

Enable water in the Frame Settings

  1. Open the Project Settings.
  2. In Graphics > HDRP Global Settings > Frame Settings you need to enable water in three places:
  • Camera > Rendering.
  • Realtime Reflection > Rendering.
  • Baked or Custom Reflection > Rendering.

This is especially important when you upgrade your project from an earlier version of Unity, because water is inactive by default. If your project originates in HDRP 14 (Unity 2022.2) or later, the water implementation may work even if you only enable it in the Quality settings.

Add the water Volume Override to the global volume

  1. Select a global Volume in your scene, such as the Sky and Fog Volume.
  2. Click Add Override.
  3. Select Lighting > Water Rendering.
  4. Set the Water Enable property to True.

This is especially important when you upgrade your project from an earlier version of Unity, because water is inactive by default. If your project originates in HDRP 14 (Unity 2022.2) or later, the water implementation may work even if you only enable it in the Quality settings.

Add a water surface to a scene

Open Game Object > Water Surface and select a surface type.

You can also use a Water shader graph to create a Water material.

Adjust Scene view Effects options

If water surface movement lags and stutters in the Scene view, open the Effects menu in the View Options toolbar and enable the Always Refresh option.

Configuration examples

You can adjust the properties to simulate the appearance of a calm or stormy day, clean or dirty water. Here are a few examples of the kinds of adjustments you might make to simulate different water conditions.

Stormy ocean, sea, or lake on an overcast day

To simulate stormy conditions, you might:

  • Increase the Distant Wind Speed, the Local Wind Speed, and both of the Amplitude Multiplier properties to imitate the effect of rising winds.
  • Increase Current speed.
  • Choose darker Color values for Refraction and Scattering.
  • You can also enable Foam.



Dirty river

To simulate a polluted or silty river, you could:

  • Choose dark brownish Color values for Refraction and Scattering, to resemble water full of mud or other particulates.
  • Lower the Absorption Distance, to make the water less transparent.
  • Disable Caustics.
  • You can also add a Decal that resembles fragments of debris.



Calm, clean swimming pool on a sunny day

To simulate a clean outdoor swimming pool on a clear day with little wind:

  • Choose a light Color value for Scattering.
  • For Refraction, choose a significantly lighter color than for Scattering.
  • Enable Caustics.
  • Set Local Wind Speed relatively low. Lower values result in tighter caustics.
  • Adjust the Virtual Plane Distance to a value appropriate to the depth of your pool.
  • In the Refraction properties, reduce Absorption Distance, to make the water more transparent. Increase Maximum Distance to extend the range of the refraction effect, especially if you have scenery in the water.



A deep swimming pool

  • Somewhat darken the Color properties for Scattering and Refraction.
  • Reduce the Absorption Distance slightly.
  • Increase Maximum Distance if there are caustics or objects in the water that make the refraction effect visible.



Additional resources