Stylized Water 3

📄 Documentation • 🟣 Discord • 💬 Forum • ⚙️ Compatibility

« A license for this asset guarantees access to updates for Unity 6.0-6.4, and potentially new versions/features. »

⭐ What's new?

- Rewritten rendering code for Render Graph support

- Revamped wave animations, allowing for various types of waves through a profile system

- GPU-based height query system, making rivers and Dynamic Effects readable

- Water decals, snaps textures onto the water (oil spills, weeds, targeting reticles)

- Improved wave crest foam shading (min/max range + bubbles)

- Ocean mesh component, 8x8km mesh with gradual vertex density

- Waterfall prefabs (3 sizes)

- Puddle prefabs

- Height Pre-pass, allows other shaders to read out the water surface height.

Projects using Stylized Water 2 can be upgraded following this guide.

Built on over 10 years of experience in shader development and water rendering, both on the asset store and for commercial projects, ready to take advantage of. This asset targets both basic and fairly advanced uses of water in games.

🏄🏽‍♀️ Rundown

Rather than being stricly PBR-based, a custom lighting model gives you direct control over color and light/environment reflections. All whilst retaining correct dynamic lighting behaviour, and support for Unity's native lighting features.

This asset is perfect for both beginners and experts alike, and can serve a range of different applications and styles. UX/UI is a core focus, making this straightforward to use. Extensive documentation is available, and regularly improved upon.

💧 Shading features:

• Unlit, Simple and Advanced shading modes (spanning low- and high-end graphics)

• Deep, shallow and horizon color controls

• Intersection foam effect with opaque geometry, based on scene-depth or vertex colors

• Adjustable surface foam

• GPU-driven, layered wave animations through presets

• Animated caustics in shallow water

• Translucency rendering from all light types

• Flat shading mode (low poly look)

• Control over Directional and Point/Spot light reflections.

• Separate control over environment reflections

• Sparkles based on normal map

• Refraction, distorts objects behind the water surface

• UV- or world-projected tiling (seamless water)

• Vertex color support to control foam, underwater fog and wave height

• River mode, for directional animations and slope-based foam.

• Distance normals and surface foam (tiling reduction)

⚙️ Technical features:

• Clean, accordion-style, material UI with tooltips and notifcations

• Tessellation support, dynamically subdivides triangles (adaptive & distance-based)

• C# API to read the water surface height.

• Component to align a Transform to the water surface (does not support Rigidbodies)

• Transparency mask to hide the water inside objects such as boats

• Planar Reflections Renderer component, robustly designed and scalable.

• Screen-Space (raytraced) Reflections, implemented as a direct shader effect.

• Water Grid component, creates water tiles which can follow a specific transform/camera

• Utility to create subdivided plane/circle mesh assets

• Custom time and world offset C# API (for network syncronized waves + floating origin systems)

📦 Includes:

• Tropical beach demo scene (desktop)

• Several pre-configured water materials

> Clear - Frozen - Lava - Lowpoly - Murky - Ocean - Realistic - Swamp - Toon

• Several foam and normal map textures

• Set of particle effects, designed for gameplay and environment enhancement (flipbooks with normal maps)

✔️ Compatibility:

• Universal Render Pipeline (URP) 17.0.3+

• PC, macOS, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, Android/iOS, WebGL 2.0 and WebGPU

• DirectX 11/12, Metal, Vulkan and OpenGL (3.0+).

• Automatic fog integration for: Enviro 3, Azure Sky, Atmospheric Height Fog, COZY Weather 3 and Buto. No code changes required!

• Supports spot/point lights and baked/dynamic GI

• Network-syncronized waves/animations are possible.

• Orthographic camera's

• VR rendering (both Single Pass Instanced & Multiview)

• Full details...

⚡ Performance:

Hand-written, expertly crafted shader, for maximum performance and complete flexibility.

Features can be disabled, making it scalable to use on mobile platforms. Down from a simple colored plane up to a vivid animated lake.

🚧 Restrictions:

• Built for 3D rendering. Can't be used with the 2D Renderer or Tilemaps

• Planar reflections aren't VR-compatible (other techniques work perfectly)

• Not suitable for planetary rendering (texture seams would be unavoidable)

• Not compatible with Apple Vision Pro.

• GPU height readback is limited to within the main camera's frustum.

➕ Available extension assets:

• Dynamic Effects, enables advanced surface effects such as ripples and shoreline waves
• Underwater Rendering, seamlessly blends the water with underwater fog

🎁 20% upgrade discount for users of Stylized Water 2 (automatically applies on checkout if already licensed)

[ Asset Store Refund policy ]

Release Notes

Please do consider leaving a REVIEW if this update proved to be beneficial. This in an invaluable way to support future development and helps make these complementary updates possible!

3.2.6 (April 7th 2026)

Verified compatibility with Unity 6.4.

Fixed:

- Pre-emptive code warning fixes for Unity 6.5+

3.2.5 (February 5th 2026)

Added:

- Support for GPU Height Queries when using WebGPU in Unity 6.1 (experimental).

Fixed:

- Intersection foam cutting off at a certain height on river materials

3.2.4 (January 5th 2026)

Fixed:

- Pre-emptive fix for obsolete code warnings in Unity 6.4+ (EntityId.implicit)

- Pre-emptive fix for Unity 6.5+ due to non-Render Graph functions being obsolete.

3.2.3 (October 22nd 2025)

Minimum required version is now Unity 6000.0.60f1 to include a bug fix.

Fixed:

- Removed workaround for a bug in Unity 6.1+ (UUM-90433). This caused the scene-view to not render correctly in some setups.

- Lightmaps not taking effect if the GPU Resident Drawer was active.

Changed:

- Align To Water component now shows a warning if the GPU method is used, yet no Main camera is present.

3.2.2 (July 30th 2025)

Changed:

- Height Pre-Pass is now strictly executed for the Main Camera when in play mode.

Fixed:

- GPU Height Queries did not appear to work when more than one Base camera was present.

- Shadow Strength parameter not affecting the underwater surface.

3.2.1 (July 7th 2025)

Added:

- Align Transform To Water component, "Follow Target" transform field. Has the transform follow another on the XZ plane

- Set Custom Water Time component, added an option to use Coordinated Universal Time

- Render feature settings, added option to disable Height pre-pass for the scene view when playing.

Changed:

- Align Transform To Water, 'smoothing' is now a scalable float value, rather than a toggle

Fixed:

- GPU height queries not always firing a callback if the water didn't happen to render in the very first frame

3.2.0 (June 12th 2025)

Added:

- Support for Rendering Layers (aka Light Layers)

- Surface Foam clipping parameter, for dynamic effects foam

- Light reflections now have a "Sharp" option

- Water Decal shader, option to enable vertex color alpha fading (eg. particle effects)

- Nintendo Style + Arcade Ocean materials

Changed:

- The "Receive Dynamic Effects Foam" toggle is now a float value. Allows to scale up the foam per-material.

- Material UI, separated reflections into Light and Environment sections

Fixed:

- GPU Height Queries returning incorrect Wave animation heights if the Scene-view tab was open during Play mode

- Distance Normals flowing backwards for rivers when Advanced Shading was used

3.1.1 (June 3rd 2025)

Fixed:

- Underwater Rendering not rendering correctly when Deferred rendering was in use

- Demo scene loading in some scenes twice in Unity 6.1 when entering play mode

Changed:

- Render feature SSR settings, the "Reflect Skybox" parameter was renamed to "Reflect Everything" for clarity

3.1.0 (May 30th 2025)

This update includes some core changes, to add support for the Underwater Rendering extension, but has no functional impact on existing projects.

Added:

- Demo scene, night-time lighting scenario

- Global Wave Origin Offset component, add a Transform's position to any wave layers set to the "Radial" mode

- Screen-Space Reflections, added option to also accept skybox reflections

- Option on render feature to disable GPU Height Queries in edit-mode (avoids the scene-view always redrawing)

Changed:

- Planar Reflections Renderer, reflection will now flip if the camera goes below the plane (support for underwater rendering).

Fixed:

- Reflection probes not affecting the water surface in Unity 6.1 (requires 6000.1.3f+)

- Potential situations where the Ocean surface may be incorrectly culled.

Removed:

- Planar Reflections Renderer, "Render Range" parameter. The functionality behind this was deprecated in Unity 6.0.

3.0.5 (February 17th 2025)

Fixed:

- Camera projection being overriden in minimal rendering setups when using Dynamic Effects

Added:

- Planar Reflections Renderer, option to disable rendering in the scene-view

- Set Water Position Offset component, added "negate" option

Removed:

- Curved World 2020 support (can still be manually incorporated)

3.0.4 (January 15th 2025)

Added:

- Fog integration for Buto (v7+)

- Wave profile procedural editor, "base direction" parameter

Changed:

- Optimization to height readback GPU processing

- Improved error handling when using unsupported features on WebGL

Fixed:

- Fixed incorrect shading on slopes in some scenarios when using Dynamic Effects (requires v3.0.4 as well)

3.0.3 (December 2nd 2024)

Added:

- Installation section in asset window, provides setup warnings/errors with quick-fix buttons

- Lowpoly-style normal map

- Puddle prefabs

- Option to specify the source for the underwater fog: Depth Texture or Vertex Color

- Menu item: Window/Stylized Water 3/Create default reflection probe

- Options to toggle Dynamic Effects Height/Foam/Normals per material

- Set Custom Time component: added option for dynamic speed

- Distance Foam feature, blends in a 2nd layer of Surface Foam within a configurable range

Changed:

- "Vertex Color Depth" option has been replaced by "Vertex Color Transparency" (value automatically upgrades)

- Having Directional Caustics or Screen-Space Reflections enabled no longer forces the Depth texture to render (though still requires it)

- Water Decals now revert to their original height if not water surface was detected below them

Fixed:

- Occlusion Culling causing incorrect Planar Reflections

- Possible null-ref error stemming from render feature

- Resolved a GC-allocation

- Memory leak in destroyed Align To Water components if the CPU-method was used.

- Flat shading not having any effect if Dynamic Effects is disabled

- Water Grid, not creating any geometry if the Vertex Distance value was larger than an individual tile

- Foam Bubbles: dynamic effects foam not contributing

- Ocean prefab potentially showing as changed in a VCS, despite no apparent changes.

- Material UI: min/max slider not allowing keyboard input

3.0.2 (November 12th 2024)

Changed:

- Material UI will now show a notification if extensions or integration aren't active installed.

- Wave tint color is now applied after color absorption

Fixed:

- Enviro 3 fog not taking effect (now requires v3.2.0+)

- Shader error when using the Gamma color space

- Workaround for editor crash when using DirectX 12 and first adding the render feature (IN-88755)

3.0.1 (November 4th 2024)

This version also requires updating the Dynamic Effects extension to v3.0.1

Added:

- Intersection Foam, parameter to control the ripple speed separately

Changed:

- Render target inspector is now functional again

Fixed:

- Dynamic Effects extension not installed automatically

- Point/spot lights no longer affecting the water after a certain distance

- Incorrect configuration on Waterfall particle prefabs

3.0.0 (November 1th 2024)

What's new?

• Rewritten rendering code for Render Graph support

• Revamped wave animations, allowing for various types of waves

• Height Pre-pass, allows other shaders to read out the water surface height.

• GPU-based height query system, making rivers and Dynamic Effects readable

• Water decals, snaps textures onto the water (oil spills, weeds, targeting reticles)

• Improved wave crest foam shading (min/max range + bubbles)

• Ocean mesh component, 8x8km mesh with gradual vertex density

• Improved support for RigidBodies for the Align To Water component

• Waterfall prefabs (3 sizes)

Added:

- Option on shader to disable point/spot light: caustics & translucency

- Waterfall prefabs (mesh, material + particles)

- Support for the Waves feature on rivers

- Align Transform To Water component now better handles RigidBodies

Changed:

- Directional Caustics is now a per-material option

- Screen-space Reflections is now a per-material option

- Sharp and Smooth intersection foam styles are now merged into one feature

- "Align Transform To Waves" is now called "Align Transform To Water"

Removed:

- Integration for Dynamic Water Physics 2 (now deferred to author)

- Non-exponential Vertical Depth (deemed unused) option