Simulate currents with water decals
To add deformation, foam, or current effects to a water surface, use a water decal, which is a texture projected onto the surface.
A water decal is a shader graph Master Stack. It's applied in world space, allowing it to project across the water surface and integrate with the entire environment, not just a single area.
By default, water decal regions are anchored to the camera. You can also anchor them to a GameObject.
Note
For backward compatibility, water decals are disabled by default.
Water decal shader graph Master Stack
By default, the water decal shader graph Master Stack contains the following properties:
- Deformation
- SurfaceFoam
- DeepFoam
Once you have enabled mask and current water decals, you can add the following water features through the Graph Inspector:
- SimulationMask
- SimulationFoamMask
- LargeCurrent
- LargeCurrentInfluence
- RipplesCurrent
- RipplesCurrentInfluence
Decal layer masks
To add foam, you can change material properties (base color, smoothness, normals, etc.) by using a decal on a water surface. For example, you might use this technique to imitate debris floating on the water.
Global Opacity determines the amount of influence the decal has on the appearance of the water surface.
The following Decal Shader Surface Options don't work with water surfaces:
- Affect Metal
- Affect Ambient Occlusion
- Affect Emission
- Affect Base Color only produces monochromatic output.
Additional resources
Did you find this page useful? Please give it a rating:
Thanks for rating this page!
What kind of problem would you like to report?
Thanks for letting us know! This page has been marked for review based on your feedback.
If you have time, you can provide more information to help us fix the problem faster.
Provide more information
You've told us this page needs code samples. If you'd like to help us further, you could provide a code sample, or tell us about what kind of code sample you'd like to see:
You've told us there are code samples on this page which don't work. If you know how to fix it, or have something better we could use instead, please let us know:
You've told us there is information missing from this page. Please tell us more about what's missing:
You've told us there is incorrect information on this page. If you know what we should change to make it correct, please tell us:
You've told us this page has unclear or confusing information. Please tell us more about what you found unclear or confusing, or let us know how we could make it clearer:
You've told us there is a spelling or grammar error on this page. Please tell us what's wrong:
You've told us this page has a problem. Please tell us more about what's wrong:
Thank you for helping to make the Unity documentation better!
Your feedback has been submitted as a ticket for our documentation team to review.
We are not able to reply to every ticket submitted.