SUIMONO - Customizeable Water System [RELEASED]

[jc_lvngstn]

Does there have to be water refraction? Maybe something people could choose to be on or off.

[sjm tech]

Maybe i found the cause of the distortion fx issue: occur when the player is in front of a transparent water zone.
Acting on "depth amount" I see this (seem that "refraction straight" don't likes the water transparence):

[chingwa]

In my Home PC (low end) the "fps test version" gives me a very low fps result than normal demo!

what???? That is certainly strange...! Thank you for sending the screenshots of what you're seeing. I'm still working on getting that distortion bleeding fixed. currently it is being partially hidden by the world depth fog, so on presets that have less fog you will have more bleeding. Hopefully I'll be able to get a better solution for this soon.

@jc_lvngstn - I do plan to build in lower quality shaders once this full shader has all the bugs worked out. So one aspect of the lower shader will be to not use refraction, and then this won't be an issue. However for water in games these days, refraction is an expected attribute... so this needs to be fixed or at least made less obvious for the full shader.

@ronan - I lowered the res of some of the textures, and also realized that I had the game camera set to HDR mode (I think this may be an issue with WebPlayers?). on my tests here I've seen a bit of an increase in fps, can you try out the below link on your system?

TEST VERSION - lores and no HDR

[sjm tech]

this is the message that "unity 4 beta webplayer Development console" shows at the start:
p.s. the last one version test_loresnohdr...gets rid of "all black water" with waves enabled...but remain very dark water and again no waves effect.

[chingwa]

thanks again sjm, it's good to know that something is affecting that black water bug, I'm continuing to investigate...

Incidentally I've just added a new preset to the system.... Skyrim

this will also be available to preview the next time I update the webplayer demo with new bugfixes...

[Mihai93]

@Chingwa Thanks i will buy it and thanks for you exist for make this

[ronan.thibaudau]

same results pretty much, 17ish fps range, doubt it's an issue with my system as gaming wise it's been running everything i throw at it just fine, and in unity i had no issues at all using SM3 shaders nor rendering 5milion poly terrains at 60fps

[sjm tech]

Hi chingwa, i have a little question .... i notice tha the demos webplayers are very big in Mb (44mb seems a complete level!) with a apparently simple scene ... how much resources are used by suimono in a projects? thanks!
Max

[chingwa]

I can't give you exact numbers at the moment... but I know the scene is currently over-bloated. I'm sure this has the effect of slowing down the web player and I was working last night to trim this down, and find exactly where the slowdown is. The water itself with all the textures and scripts I think is only around 10-15% of the download... The full shader in it's un-optimized state with all the depth/refract/reflect, caustic projection and waves is something like 10-15 drawcalls.

when I get back from the office I can give you a more accurate account.

[Mihai93]

thanks again sjm, it's good to know that something is affecting that black water bug, I'm continuing to investigate...

Incidentally I've just added a new preset to the system.... Skyrim

this will also be available to preview the next time I update the webplayer demo with new bugfixes...

Excelent Mane a question this scene will be included?

[chingwa]

unfortunately no, the scene itself will not be included. I just wanted to show the preset it in a more natural "skyrim-like" context instead of the grid demo scene.

[chingwa]

I've gone through and optimized the scene as much as possible, removing the time-of-day and also adding a few shader options to choose from for performance testing. I'd be interested to know sjm, and ronan, if you see any kind of performance increase either right away, or by selecting any of the test shaders...

OPTIMIZED DEMO TEST (15mb)

the refractive bleeding bug is still an issue unfortunately.

@sjm - here's a breakdown of the draw calls I see on my side...
water surface only - 2 drawcalls
with refraction, reflection, depth - 9 drawcalls
with wave effect - 10 drawcalls

the projector caustics will be more or less performance heavy depending on the complexity of your scene. here in this demo scene it's adding 3 drawcalls, but it will certainly be more in a more complex scene. In the full package I have the option to do caustics using a shadow technique instead of a projector. It doesn't look as nice, but it only adds 1 draw call to the overhead. total download size for the entire Suimono package will be around 90mb.

Also @Mihai, this test version does include the new "skyrim" preset if you'd like to see it in motion.

[sjm tech]

Big speed increase!

At Home (without waves enabled):

XPpro - GF 7900 GS - Uity 4 beta webplayer

Full shader: 35-45 fps
No depth: +1 fps
No refract: +2 fps
No reflect: +3 fps
Surface only : + 7 fps
Water off: + 10 fps

caustic: no reduction(notable) in fps
Lava field : - 10 fps (regards the other presets)

At Work :

W7U 64bit - Radeon HD 5870 - Unity 3.5.5 Webplayer
- All settings : 60 fps
- Only after dropping at least 100 cubes i can see 1 or 2 fps on less.

I made a clearing of "Unity Island Demo" (evergreen demo scene) that i use to test water solutions...could you try to add your system (now unity water4)to show it in action in a realistic developing stage.
- Island Demo low
- Reference webplayer with unity water4 (only 3 MB... usefull to detect the weigth of SUIMONO )

[raoul]

I had the same flickering going on as mentioned by UnleadedGames. Much better on the lastest builds but still flickering going on near the edges over here. This is on a on a nvidea GTX275

[Neptune_Imaging]

This is very good looking... I had a chance to view the web demo and I noticed that the lava is still refracting/reflecting and generating ripples when it obviously would never generate ripples... and i think this would definitely work with my project...

And I would love to see a real time scene rendered with Beast, especially with the Lava water...

[chingwa]

@SJM - OK Great! Thank you for your speed breakdowns. I feel there's probably a bit more optimization I can do in the shaders but this is very encouraging. Also thank you for the island demo scene. It's a great idea for comparison purposes! I'll download these files and upload a new demo webplayer later tonight.

@raoul - yes that flickering bug is really elusive to track down. I'm certain it's from the depth shader calculation. I am continuing to look into this, thanks for your card specs!

@Neptune - I can tweak the lava preset. Currently I'm actually stacking multiple water surfaces on top of each other to generate a more interesting effect, but this is of course not ideal. I can look into doing a webplayer demo in a lightmapped scene as well, for comparison.

THANK YOU everyone for the assistance!

[UnleadedGames]

Sorry about that chingwa, got side tracked and forgot to respond! The light flickering still happens but as Raoul mentions, the new build is much better but still there. I've updated to the latest nvidia drivers. I don't seem to have any issues with my wife's Geforce 8800, and my HTPC uses an AMD Radeon HD 4970, and both play the scene just fine. I do have to wonder if this is a problem for other geforce 200 series users out there as well?

[ronan.thibaudau]

I'm still getting horrible performance with much better and more recent graphic card than than those reporting 40-60fps (2006 card vs 2011!)
It seems really weird to me

[chingwa]

OK, I have two new test demos based off the island scene that SJM posted here:

Reference island scene

The first test is using the "Hot Spring" prefab, and is the full shader. The second test is 1/3rd the size because I took out the caustic textures and animations. I'd like to now if you guys notice much performance difference between these two, and obviously if they're is any performance difference compared to the original scene above...

Island Test Demo 1
Island Test Demo 2

@UnleadedGames and Raoul - no specific idea what is causing this flashing though I know it has to do with the depth calculations. I'm still doing some tests to try and narrow this down so this has not been specifically addressed in the test files mentioned above, but I would be curious to see if the second demo has any affect on this problem. I've been searching for gtx200 series issues but nothing that informs this problem has come up yet. I assume you're getting decent fps, and it's just the flashing that is the issue?

@ronan - Can you try the original scene from smj above, and then the first test demo to compare the fps? That should definitely narrow down the problem if you're still getting low performance.

Trying to fix all these issues has been a very frustrating experience for me, but also a very necessary one. The end of August has come and gone, but as you can see Suimono is getting very very close to release. I'd like to thank you guys for your help and patience, and I hope everyone bears with me until all these kinks are addressed!

[sjm tech]

Hi chingwa ... could you add an option to disable the waves because in my home pc i see the dark water effect!
In an half hour I do a test in my Work pc.
excluding (my) aesthetic issues...I don't see any performane difference compared the reference scene (cool).
I'm very curios regards the oversizing of the webplayer (in the first demo)...but is another thing! (if you want a beta tester...i can find some time to do!)

Edit: Work Pc...no display issues...fps same as reference scene (very good).

Some esthetical notes (i think already available by some tweak of your system):
- The shore line seem not well faded on the edge in the contact with the terrain.
- I don't see any reflection of the terrain environment!
- No enough transparent near the water (except near the shoreline)
- Some pixelate fx near the water plane.
- maintain the waves effect near (now is present faded also in the rest of water) the shoreline and add a falloff to rest of water.


Another note...the waves effect is awesome!