Unity includes several water PrefabsAn asset type that allows you to store a GameObject complete with components and properties. The prefab acts as a template from which you can create new object instances in the scene. More info
See in Glossary (including the necessary Shaders, scripts and art Assets) within the Standard Assets packages. Separate daylight and nighttime water Prefabs are provided.
Note that the water reflections described in this document do not work in VR.
Place one of the existing water Prefabs into your SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary. Make sure you have the Standard Assets installed:
The Prefab uses an oval-shaped Mesh for the water. If you need to use a different MeshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
See in Glossary, change it in the Mesh FilterA mesh component that takes a mesh from your assets and passes it to the Mesh Renderer for rendering on the screen. More info
See in Glossary of the water GameObjectThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info
See in Glossary:
Simple water requires attaching a script to a plane-like mesh and using the water shaderA small script that contains the mathematical calculations and algorithms for calculating the Color of each pixel rendered, based on the lighting input and the Material configuration. More info
See in Glossary:
Reflective/refractive water requires similar steps to set up from scratch:
These properties are used in the Reflective and Refractive water Shaders. Most of them are used in the Simple water Shader as well.
Property: | Function: |
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Wave scale | Scaling of waves normal map. The smaller the value, the larger water waves. |
Reflection/refraction distort | How much reflection/refraction is distorted by the waves normal map. |
Refraction color | Additional tint for refraction. |
Environment reflection/refraction | Render texturesA special type of Texture that is created and updated at runtime. To use them, first create a new Render Texture and designate one of your Cameras to render into it. Then you can use the Render Texture in a Material just like a regular Texture. More info See in Glossary for real-time reflection and refraction. |
Normalmap | Defines the shape of the waves. The final waves are produced by combining these two normal maps, each scrolling at different direction, scale and speed. The second normal map is half as large as the first one. |
Wave speed | Scrolling speed for first normal map (1st and 2nd numbers) and the second normal map (3rd and 4th numbers). |
Fresnel | A texture with alpha channel controlling the Fresnel effectAn effect representing the increase in reflectivity on objects when light hits at grazing angles. In Unity, the Standard Shader handles this indirectly, depending on a material’s smoothness. Smooth surfaces have a stronger Fresnel, totally rough surfaces have no Fresnel. More info See in Glossary - how much reflection vs. refraction is visible, based on viewing angle. |
The rest of the properties are not used by the Reflective and Refractive Shaders, but need to be set up in case the user’s video card does not support it and must fallback to the simpler shader:
Property: | Function: |
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Reflective color/cube and fresnel | A texture that defines water color (RGB) and Fresnel effect (A) based on viewing angle. |
Horizon color | The color of the water at horizon. `this is only used in the Simple water Shader. |
Fallback texture | Define the fallback Texture used to represent the water on really old video cards, if none of the better looking Shaders can run. |
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