Underwater Rendering for Stylized Water 3 (Extension)

📌 REQUIRES THE STYLIZED WATER 3 (v3.2.0+) ASSET TO BE INSTALLED!

Before purchasing, you must acknowledge this (see section above)

« For use with Unity 6.0-6.4 »

📄 Documentation ‍⚙️ Compatibilty 🟣 Discord 🔗 Forum Thread

Draws a waterline lens effect for partially submerged camera's, through an innovative technique. Unlike in many games, it won't be required to snap the camera to sit either above or below the water, or resort to other tricks.

Compatible with the Dynamic Effects extension. Effects such as ripples and shoreline waves also affect the camera's water line.

What's new?

• Completely rewritten for Unity 6’s Render Graph

• Redesigned to work exclusively with defined underwater areas (box collider triggers)

• Particle Effect controller, makes effects follow the camera underwater up to a specific depth (eg. sunshafts)

• Easier integration for transparent materials. The render queue of the effect can now be set

• Revised shader for transparency, used for particle effects underwater.

• Optimized technical design, no longer requires using full-screen post-processing

• Support for mobile hardware.

• Control for a lowpass audio filter effect when the camera is submerged, muffles environmental sounds.

• Blur/distortion effects have not been ported (not implemented in any AAA games either, will be reconsidered based on feedback)

🌊 Features:

• Underwater fog based on the water's deep/shallow colors.

• Waterline rendering for partially submerged cameras

• Scene lighting is translated into the underwater fog, including sub-surface scattering. Reacts to dynamic directional and ambient lighting.

• Caustics rendering on geometry. Directional projection option.

• Underside of the water is correctly shaded, to seamlessly match.

• Includes sub-graphs to add underwater fog support for transparent Shader Graphs (+ASE)

🚧 Limitations:

• Designed for oceans, lakes and ponds. Dioramas or aquariums aren't possible.

• Can't mask underwater (eg. submarine windows)

• Not a volumetric fog/light solution, but rather depth-based.

• Requires a single water level (incompatible with rivers/planets)

🎁 10% upgrade discount for "Stylized Water 2 Underwater Rendering" licensees.

[ Refund policy ] Refunds cannot be granted for not having read the sections on this page

Fish and ships shown in video/screenshots are for showcasing, they aren't included. The scene used is the included demo scene.

Release Notes

3.2.7

Verified compatibility with Unity 6.4.

Added:

- Lowpass audio effect functionality for submerged cameras. See the "Audio" section of the documentation.

3.2.6

Changed:

- Supressed warning when a compressed reflection cubemap is used

Fixed:

- Pre-emptive fixes for obsolete code warnings/errors in Unity 6.4+

3.2.5

Changed:

- Underwater Area inspector now shows the currently active area. If selected the amount of submersion is displayed.

- Optimized the use of dozens of Underwater Area components by first checking intersection broadly

Fixed:

- Underwater Areas nested within another not appearing to be functional

3.2.4

Changed:

- Underwater surface transparency now factors in the deep color's alpha value.

Fixed:

- Waterline rendering not taking a custom water position offset into account

- Underwater shadows not working correctly for caustics if the Screen Space Shadows render feature was active

3.2.3

Fixed:

- Error regarding "SetRenderAttachmentDepth" when depth priming mode was Disabled in Unity 6.1

3.2.2

Fixed:

- Rendering taking effect even when camera is outside of an Underwater Area for components created before v3.2.0

Changed:

- Underwater Area is no longer rendering if the assigned Box Collider is disabled

3.2.1

Fixed:

- Some shading features (eg. Caustics/Translucency) being disabled in a build if not originally enabled in the editor (regression since v3.2.0)

- Memory leak when using Skybox lighting (0.9kb)

3.2.0

Also requires v3.2.0 of the Stylized Water 3 base asset!

Added:

- "Render Method" option on the render feature. Specifies if rendering takes place before transparent materials, or during.

- Support for multiple simultaneous camera's (eg. split-screen)

Changed:

- Various improvements to underwater shading, surface clarity decreases as the camera goes deeper

- Improved camera submersion detection, now also factors in the screen corners.

3.2.0

Added:

- Underwater Area now supports rotated box colliders

Changed:

- Detection of the active Underwater Area now also factors which is closest, to better handle two or more overlapping areas

Fixed:

- Lake volume in demo not having the same material assigned as the water mesh

- Removed missing prefabs from demo scene (remnant of showcasing materials)

- Waterline Lens Offset parameter also appearing to clip the underwater fog near the camera

3.1.0

Added:

- Particle Effect controller, makes effects follow the camera underwater up to a specific depth (eg. sunshafts)

- Support for mobile hardware.

Changed:

- Rewritten rendering for Unity's Render Graph

- Optimized technical design, no longer uses full-screen post-processing.

- Redesigned to work exclusively with defined underwater areas (box collider triggers)

- Revised shader for transparency, now only blend the alpha value.

Removed:

- Blur/distortion effects, incurred maintenance overhead as URP's rendering code kept changing. Considered niche as AAA games do not use distortion effects underwater.

- Volume-based settings blending functionality (deemed unused).