Crest Water 5 (Oceans, Rivers, Lakes)

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Crest is a trusted water solution by many studios for its quality and performance. It has been implemented in several successful games and simulators and is the subject of SIGGRAPH talks.

Nominated for Best Artistic Tool in the 16th Unity Awards.

CREST 4 x 5 HIGHLIGHTS

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Supports all render pipelines in one package.
Re-architectured to further performance scalability.
Multiple LOD viewpoints for split-screen multiplayer etc.
WebGPU support (experimental).
Many new features and improvements.

Some features (mostly deprecated) have been removed, while others have been moved to separate packages. Please refer to the Release Notes for more information.

Important: The Shallow Water package is NOT required for shallow water. It is an integrated shallow water simulation - a next-generation feature. Crest 5 can still have shallow water using the same features as Crest 4 does.

WORKFLOW

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Add water in minutes with two components (water surface and waves).
Sane and balanced defaults.
Helpful tooltips including materials properties.
Detailed help boxes display validation errors directly in the inspector with buttons to fix problems directly.
Online and offline documentation.
Fully documented scripting API.
Supports all three render pipelines in one asset.
Imports into the Packages directory as an editable UPM package.
No requirement to remove Crest before updating like other assets.

FEATURES

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Novel Level of Detail System

Both mesh and data are rendered using several LODs. This allows high fidelity up close without sacrificing performance. This system has been used for several years, including multiple successful titles, thus is mature and battle-tested. More information: https://docs.crest.waveharmonic.com/Manual/SystemNotes.html

Multiple Level of Detail Viewpoints

Crest can now have multiple LOD viewpoints to support split-screen multiplayer and multiple camera scenarios.

Rich Selection of Data

Due to Crest's scalable system, it can execute several data sets. These include Animated Waves (displacement), Dynamic Waves, Water Depth, Water Level, Albedo, Flow, Foam, Shadows, and Surface Clipping. The selection has been expanded since launch to now include Absorption and Scattering.

Powerful Input System

These data sets have accompanying inputs which can inject and manipulate data. They have different modes so you can use renderers (mesh, trail, line, and particles), textures etc as data sources - this includes Shader Graph support. We provide a waterfall sample to show what can be accomplished without any custom shaders.

Query System

Query water displacement, normals, and velocity (using asynchronous GPU read back) to get data to the CPU. Furthermore, other data can be queried like flow and signed-distance to the shoreline.

Physically Based Rendering

Simulated light transport including approximation of reflections, refractions, transmission, scattering, caustics, and shadowing.

Underwater

Underwater effect with pixel-perfect partial submersion. Includes a meniscus (water line), and models out-scattering (darkening with depth).

Water Physics

Buoyancy and drag are provided with a semi-modular floating object system. With layers, physics can be nested to allow floating objects to behave correctly inside other floating objects (eg barrel in a boat).

Deterministic FFT and Gerstner Waves

With innovative "equalizer" style wave authoring, create wave conditions from calm seas to monstrous waves for storms. Multiple wave sets can be blended together, including local waves with edge interpolation. This is the most powerful wave system for Unity.

Shallow Water Wave Attenuation

Dampens waves based on the water depth similar to how they would at shore, and importantly prevents waves from rising above the surface.

Important: This is not the same thing as the shallow water simulation, which is a separate asset.

Absorption & Scattering Simulation

Change absorption and scattering at the texel level. Give rivers and lakes different colors, or simulate various beaches by using the shoreline absorption/scattering.

Dynamic Waves Simulation

An advanced dynamic wave simulation used for modelling wakes, ripples, wave reflections, and other forms of waves.

Foam Simulation

A rich foam simulation where foam dissipates over time. Foam contributions can come from turbulence, shorelines, and foam inputs.

Flow

Advects waves, normals, foam, and caustics. Bring your own flow map via a texture or use our many other input modes.

Shadow Simulation

Provides both soft and hard shadows. The former is used for shadowing the water volume; it will vary the softness by the scattering/absorption coefficients. The latter is used to improve on Unity's shadows, which affect specular highlights.

Surface Clipping

This is used to remove the water surface for boats, caves, etc. Holes can be cut using a mesh or signed-distance primitives for extra precision.

Varying Water Level

Change the water level to create elevated lakes. It is possible to create a gradient to create rivers and streams which blend seamlessly with lakes and oceans. Bring your own height map via a texture or use our many other input modes.

Albedo Layer

Apply color to the water surface similar to decals. This is perfect for algae in swamps.

Bioluminescence

We have added the latest in water rendering trends: bioluminescence. It can be restricted to shorelines or include open water. The effect is very customisable.

Advanced Rendering

Crest can render motion vectors (as far as we are aware, other water assets do not), and depth for post-processing effects like Depth of Field. It can also render before transparency (experimental) to support Soft Particles, refractive objects like glass, and with a Shader Graph node, apply underwater correctly to transparent objects.

Platform Support

We have an entry under Project Settings which allow you to disable features based on the target platform. We have also added experimental web platform support via WebGPU:

https://docs.crest.waveharmonic.com/Manual/Platforms.html#web

Mobile Rendering Modes

We have added two new rendering options: Simple Transparency (no opaque/depth texture needed) and Simple Mesh mode (quad with no displacement). Both of these options trade accuracy and fidelity for improved performance. They can be very effective on restrictive hardware, like mobile, where tiled rendering is common. For more information:

https://docs.crest.waveharmonic.com/Manual/PerformanceGuide.html#mobile-performance

Online & Offline Documentation

We provide documentation both online and offline. Documentation includes a fully documented API. Offline documentation is in the form of a PDF. Online documentation can be found here: https://docs.crest.waveharmonic.com/About/Introduction.html

Documented API

We provide an extensive API which is fully documented. Here is the page for the main component: https://docs.crest.waveharmonic.com/API/WaveHarmonic.Crest/WaterRenderer.html

Much More

Planar reflections including Total Internal Reflections
Flexible time synchronisation to support networking and cutscenes
Water shader is a Shader Graph (only two nodes, internals are still HLSL)
Gaia Pro VS integration
And much more

Please see extension assets below for more features.

Please see the Frequently Asked Questions section in our documentation for more important information.

Sample scene selection may not include ones shown in marketing materials and screenshots.

COMPATIBILITY

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Unity 6 supported.
Unity 6 URP Render Graph & compatibility mode supported.
Motion Vectors.
Depth-based effects like Depth of Field.
Raytraced Reflections (HDRP only).
Forward, Forward+, Deferred, Deferred+, Perspective, and Orthographic supported.
Single-Pass (Instanced), Multiview and Multi-Pass Stereo Rendering (VR/XR) supported.

LIMITATIONS

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Planar reflections currently do not support XR.
Motion Vectors are more expensive for BIRP than other RPs (Unity bug).
Depth-based effects (like DoF) are more expensive for BIRP than other RPs (Unity limitation).
WebGPU is experimental

These known limitations may be solved in future versions. Please also read the Technical Details foldout.

REQUIREMENTS

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Unity 2022.3, Unity 6.0 or Unity 6.3
Shader Graph package
Shader compilation target 4.5 or above
Graphics API that is not OpenGL or WebGL
WebGPU requires texture-formats-tier2 support
3D rendering (ie URP 2D rendering not supported)
One license required for each individual user (see EULA)

As a general requirement, it may be necessary to update to the latest patched version of Unity in order for a problem to be solved. Furthermore, legacy versions of Unity are not supported. We only support "Supported" or LTS versions.

EXTENSIONS

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These are optional extensions.

CPU Queries: Not required as there are GPU queries provided. This is for GPU-less environments.
Paint: Paint data with a non-destructive workflow.
Portals: Restrict rendering to a mesh. Useful for aquariums and portholes.
Shallow Water: A shallow water simulation. Not required for shallow water, as Crest has wave attenuation. It is a next-generation feature.
Shifting Origin: Keeps the camera at zero. Only needed for very large worlds.
Splines: Powerful tool for creating lakes, rivers, and more.
Whirlpool: Bespoke feature to create a customizable whirlpool.

ASSET COMPATIBILITY

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We avoid non-standard techniques and are not aware of any major incompatibilities. We have a list of known integrations, including Cozy 3, Dynamic Water Physics 2 (DWP2), Enviro 3, Expanse and Gaia.

Release Notes

Changes

Hide legacy underwater dependent options if not legacy underwater is enabled
Show culling override in water level gizmos
Improve Ripple Generator UX by renaming fields and adding tooltips
Reduce foam pixelation by using higher texture compression quality. This can be improved further by using no compression

Fixes

Fix “ambiguous call to ‘mul’” and “ambiguous call to ‘clamp’” shader errors for PS4
Fix ShapeCombine possibly sampling out of bounds
Fix NullReferenceException on disabling Editor Multiple Viewpoints
Fix a render texture being replaced with multiple viewpoints on initialization (possible leak)
Fix potential exception if simulation is disabled
Fix queries not executing per scene view in edit mode
Fix NaNs if certain simulations are disabled
Fix broken scene camera shadow simulation
Fix shadow simulation not working correctly for game camera
Fix accumulation blur for Shadows, Foam and Dynamic Waves simulations
Fix objects underwater being black if flow is disabled on the Water Renderer but flow and caustics enabled on the material
Fix Water Body causing flickering of water surface
Fix several potential NullReferenceExceptions

Optimizations

Optimize blur compute shader
Remove two unecessary copy texture passes for simulation blur
Remove dead code including unused shader uniform
Save VRAM bu reducing render texture count for Shadows, Foam and Dynamic Waves simulations
Ensure the viewpoints (LOD center / system) is only executed once per-frame for a camera

Documentation

Add Foam Shading section
Add notes/tips for integration

5.8.1

Changes

Validate that Before Transparency and opaque water material are not used together
Get Rendering Layer Mask from Chunk Template when using quad mesh

Fixes

Fix incorrect Sphere Water Interaction filtering if Dynamic Waves resolution differs from Animated Waves
Fix destroy asset error with ShapeFFT/Gerstner
Fix zero feather when using texture mode for inputs writing outside of bounds
Fix texture mode multiplier not applying to ShapeFFT/Gerstner
Fix diffuse lighting missing for quad mesh
Fix potential incorrect lighting - especially at night HDRP
Fix exception spam if custom shader is used
Fix water level input gizmo “not implemented” exception
Fix background data potentially not working
Fix ShapeFFT/Gerstner UI potentially breaking
Fix shadow simulation not clearing command buffer with multiple viewpoints BIRP
Fix underwater not working for multiple viewpoints
Fix water shader build error “variable ‘context’ used without having been completely initialized” HDRP
Revert “Remove redundant clears” to fix inputs not clearing on PS5
Silence “InvalidOperationException: Stack empty”

Optimization

Optimize data types in shape combine step

5.8.0

Changes

Support using water material with other renderers via Custom Mesh toggle
Add fresnel stylize controls
Add stylized sample
Add foam sampling options including None, Multi-Scale and Stochastic in the project settings
Add time and chop scales to FFT wave spectrum (under Show Advanced Controls)
Add attenuation scales to wave spectrum (under Show Advanced Controls)
Add Integration.shadersubgraph where users can place their sub graphs to modify the water surface shader fragment. This file will unlikely be changed unlike the main Shader Graph file
Add method for adding custom atmospheric fog or changing the final color of the water surface without converting the Shader Graph to HLSL
Add additional (punctual) light support HDRP
Add rudimentary sub-surface scattering to volume lighting from additional lights
Add Additional Lights Blend property to water shader
Add Additional Lights Term property to water shader
Add Renderer Index to Reflections URP
Add Placement to Depth Probe to have it follow transform or viewer
Add Apply Displacement Normals to water material
Add vertical displacement culling control to Dynamic Waves
Add dynamic waves horizontal displacement to chunk bounds for culling
Apply scripting symbol changes to non-current build targets
Hide shader properties if disabled in settings
Add out-scatter to feature stripping
Add apply smoothness to feature stripping
Add Advanced heading to Reflections
Add EveryFrame real-time option to DepthProbe
Rearrange Surface foldout fields
Validate precision issues with displacement
Update several “override” fields as inline toggles
Add Enable Chunk Culling to enable/disable underwater chunk culling
Add Additional Lights stripping option to project settings
Update and add extra validation for wind speeds
Improve Minimum Reflection Direction Y by only applying to Unity reflections
Add missing wind zone APIs
Space out fields on ShapeFFT/Gerstners and fix order
Update outdated Legacy Underwater tooltip
Skip SurfaceSelfIntersectionFixMode logic when no underwater only if set to Automatic
Better handle Gerstner wave randomness for phases

Fixes

Fix script compiler warnings for Unity 6.3, 6.4 and 6.5
Fix potential issues with embedded editors
Fix wave spectrum advanced controls alignment
Fix missing cases where project settings feature stripping was not applied
Fix various cases of changes to Reflection properties not applying
Fix applying water level normal twice
Fix planar reflection non-distorted ghost image
Fix caustics and scattering when baked lighting is used
Fix flow missing from Simple Mesh
Fix chunks disappearing due to incorrect chunk culling from incorrect input reporting
Fix exception when enabled Blur on Albedo simulation
Fix script compilation errors if VR module is disabled
Fix XR not working in Unity 6.5
Fix (kind of) shadow simulation when using multiple viewpoints BIRP
Fix log spam with Render Graph and planar reflections if gizmos enabled URP
Fix Minimum Reflection Direction Y not applying to Unity reflections if no sky in planar reflections
Fix script compilation error if no Input System package
Fix script compilation errors if Wind module is disabled
Fix warnings if no Shallow Water package and Gaia is installed

Optimizations

Improve chunk culling performance
Optimize feature culling in camera loop
Eliminate non-cached Shader.PropertyToID usage
Optimize queries by moving more work to CPU
Move some work for flow to CPU
Minor optimization to normal map sampling
Only compile additional lights for water surface
Optimize surface normal calculation
Reduce normalize usage in water shader
Skip Minimum Reflection Direction Y calculation if not needed
Skip Normal Overall Strength calculation if not needed
Add flow variants to not sample flow in various simulations
Minor optimization to keyword usage in vertex stage in water shader
Remove unused but active global shader property
Skip water level derivatives when calculating motion vector
Add water level derivatives to normal varying instead of own varying
Optimize shader includes
Minor optimizations to query system
Remove redundant texture clears
Minor optimization of data types for volume lighting calculations
Optimize per-camera water chunks code path
Optimize Gerstner compute by replacing buffer with array
Add variant for wave pairs to Gerstner to save on performance cost, as it is often not needed
Add sealed to classes that were reccently missed where appropriate