SUIMONO - Customizeable Water System [RELEASED]

Hi SevenBits,

Well, My Dev machine is a pretty hardy i7 3.4 with 2 GTX 580's in SLI... this does not give you much information as this system can run essentially anything.

Suimono does run well on normal hardware and even older hardware with one caveat... the dynamic realtime reflection component adds overhead depending on the scene you are running it in as it renders your viewing frustrum as a second pass. If you have a really complex scene this could definitely cost you as far as performance goes.

Of course, this component is optional, and Suimono also supports static cubemap reflections in this case.

You can give the web-player a go, and see how it runs for you...
http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/demo/

Of course this is slower than running on a desktop, but it should give you some idea of performance.

 

I tried the web player, and it ran pretty well on my computer. Is it possible to see the cubemap reflections in the demo? I have very art-heavy scenes and throwing on water with so many effects just might propel the frame rate below my target...

Very nice product by the way.

 

Thanks SevenBits.

The cubemap is actually always running.... the cubemap included with suimono and in the demo is very basic though and just adds a subtle reflective effect... intended to compliment the dynamic reflection.

the free version of Unity wont be able to do dynamic reflections... if you run the demo again, click on the "deep dark" preset, and then switch the mode checkboxes from unity pro to just unity, you can see some of the cubemap going on, though it isn't meant to reflect much in this scene here.

 

Yes, I saw that when I ran the demo. The reflections were pretty good on a few, but on many of them, they just didn't look quite right without the dynamic reflections. It could be though because the scene is basic, so it probably would look fine in an actual game.

I just wanted to add as well that I really like the ability to switch presets at runtime. That's certainly a bonus for me, especially going from winter ice to other water during a season change, and how the light changes depending on the ambient light of the scene.

 

Is suimono water well suited for very large oceans ? I mean an Unity water plane scaled to 20000X20000 for example.
Thanks

 

You can scale it to any size without affecting performance. At that size the scale may be a bit off so you'll have to tweak some of the scaling settings but everything is exposed and easily customizable. Just be aware though that Suimono doesn't currently generate real 3D waves, so the ocean will look a bit flat. Real waves is a feature I'm planning to add in the 2.0 update.

 

Ok, thanks, and is suimono already compatible with shader model 2 ?

 

Yes it currently supports shader model 2, but only in the basic version.... the full shader requires SM3. You can see the difference between the basic version and the full version in the webplayer, by switching between "Unity" and "Unity Pro" mode.

Also of note, even though SM2 is supported on the basic shader, I have not done testing as far as mobile devices are concerned, so I don't support and can't officially recommend Suimono for mobile. It is designed for desktop / webplayer applications.

 

You're probably better off supporting newer cards anyway. Supporting SM3 at least is the way to go. SM3 has been on most cards for several years now, after all.

 

Hi,

any rough eta on 2.0?

tx,

shwa

 

Hi shwa, 2.0 is still a little ways off. I have a new asset, yet to be announced, coming out very soon (unrelated to Suimono) so this has been taking all my development time. Once this is released I should be able to devote time to bringing the 2.0 features to fruition

 

Cool.

Looking forward to reading about your new asset.

Curiosity is an interesting thing.

 

Thanks Shwa, won't be long now... All should be ready in a couple days

 

I bought the pack it's great but sometimes objects drop in the water but no splashes and sound, how to avoid this?

 

Hi Korok,

Make sure any objects you want to interact with the water have a collider component AND a rigidbody component. Without some additional information I can't say why this is happening for you for sure, but that would be my first guess. The splash and sound effects require some sort of Physics interaction to take place between the objects and the water surface.

You may also need to enable more forceful collision detection on some of your objects, on the object rigidbody try setting the Interpolation Setting, and the Collision Detection to Continuous...

 

I have a feature request.
I use UniStorm from Black Horizon Studios and it would be great i there where a solution in your pack when it rains to send a message from UniStorm to your Water and on the water there can be raindrops on the water surface maybe with the info for more or less drops.
This could be added to the foam on the water too so when it is more windy there are more foam and waves.

I think there is a solution from UniStorm to send a message but i could ask the developer.

This will ad a little more realistic to the water at least the raindrop thing.

 

Hi Rand,

I haven't personally looked at UniStorm so I don't know how they handle their rain effects... but I'll get in contact with BHS and see what's involved.

 

Hi chingwa,

I've tried the SUIMONO water system and it does look really awesome, but when I change the build platform to Android there are a bunch of errors in the scripts

Now, I've tried modifying those (it was mainly enforcing types to variables) but afterwards the code kept crashing whenever ripples where to be created and what is more disturbing is the fact that there are no ripples created at all when the water collides with the unity terrain :/

Any hints ? I really need this to work with Android and it wasn't a cheap purchase :/

Thanks!
/ivo

 

If you had read the OP, you would have read that it is not mobile compatible. Don't just assume that they're wrong and buy it anyway: read the damned thing.

 

Hi Trumpets,

Well, Suimono is not designed for mobile, nor has it been officially tested on mobile platforms. This is something I would like to change in the future, but currently I don't have the capacity to support iOS or Android, unfortunately. I do state on the asset store page that it is for desktop/webplayer only... but I'm sorry this has turned out to be a problem for you. Since you specifically are using this for mobile, if you contact the asset store I'm sure they will offer you a refund in such a case.

As for the water/terrain collisions... Suimono is designed to interact with colliders and rigidbodies. The Unity terrain has it's own special (hidden) type of collision and thus they don't automatically react with each other. One way around this is to place rigidbody objects at points where the terrain intersects the water when you want their to be splashes. These objects can have colliders and rigidbodies, but no renderers, so they will be invisible and it will appear as if the water is interacting with the terrain

 

Just a quick note to let you guys know that I've finally gotten PayPal payments, and instant downloads up and working on the Tanuki Digital site. This was a long time coming, but I'm happy to finally offer an alternative payment option for those who are considering purchasing Suimono.

 

Hi.
I just tried to drag the water module prefab out onto my scene with the water surface prefab on top of it. I tried entering underwater to test things out and apparently there are strange lines above as I look up. Any idea what the cause of it is?

Here's a screenshot to show what I mean:

 

Hi Bastionn, that's an awfully strange effect... a couple questions...

1) are you using Unity free, or Unity Pro? and what is your camera rendering mode.. forward or deferred?
2) make sure if you're using Unity free to set the Unity Version on the "WaterModule_quality" component to "Unity" instead of "Unity Pro".
3) also double check that your scene camera is set as the main camera using the "main camera" game object tag.

The other thing you may want to try is disabling dynamic reflections.... on the "Water_Surface" object you'll see a component called "water_reflection_mirror"... try disabling this component and then running your scene again and seeing if that has any effect on the lines.

Let me know if any of the above helps!

-Justin

 

That's actually a cool way to do this. I guess that's a good alternative considering... cough cough... that Unity's terrain collider isn't open.

 

Any plans to eventually reverse engineer any of pro waters functionality?

 

I find I spend a lot of time in Unity hitting walls that really shouldn't be there... :/ The great thing about Unity is the openness of it all, but that just makes it doubly frustrating when you run up against something that is shut off from access, like certain parts of the terrain system, or certain parts of the particle system.

Possibly. I "reverse engineered" the dynamic reflections in Suimono from the Pro Water... but it is also the poorest performing section of Suimono I've been looking at how they handle 3D waves, and I'm also looking at other implementations as well. Any specific features you're thinking of?

 

I was thinking 3d waves myself.

 

Thanks for the reply! It seems that if I turn the water_overlay inside WATER_surface off, it seems to eliminate the problem.

I'm using Pro but apparently, when I switch the quality to Unity, it also solved the problem. I'm using deferred currently.

As of now, it looks like this:



Is there any way to reduce the green in it? i tried changing the colors in the shader component but each time I start the game it reverts back to the original colors.

 

Yes, this is because the water_presets component (on "Water_Surface") is overriding your custom settings. you have a couple options here, you can either turn off this component, or remove it completely, or simply set "water_system_state" to be "custom". This should allow you to then edit the look of your water anyway you want.

This problem has been popping up for a while... I'll be changing this in a future update so it is at "custom" by default.

I'm glad you got the line artifacts to go away, but you shouldn't have to revert to the basic "unity" version to do it. you could also try removing the "waterModule_quality" component entirely, and switching the water_surface shader manually to "suimono/water_full"

 

After I have placed this into the world, and close unity. When I try to start unity it crashes. I deleted the folder from this from the project and Unity loads fine. This leads me to believe it is this causing it.

I had 2 water planes loaded. Not sure if that's the problem or not.

 

Hi Vic, can you give me a little more info, like what version of Unity you're running, whether it's Pro or Unity free...? I'll try and recreate this on my end, though it may be difficult to replicate. I haven't heard anyone else having crashing problems. I guess it could be likely due to Suimono and some other plugin conflicting with each other. Can you tell me if you have other plugins / asset store items installed in your project? feel free to email me at konnichiwa[at]tanukidigital.com as well, if you'd rather not post your project info on this forum.

-Justin

 

email sent. Thank you for the quick responses.

 

Hello!
I'm having a problem with the SUIMONO system flashing Pink on startup and also between scenes. Using the 'Unity' version.
It appears as though it has lost the shader or is trying to dynamically load the shader between scenes. Help!

Edit - you can see in the Assets that the mat_water_reflective is also pink in this screenshot.




And both the shaders have an error? Have an ATI Radeon X1900 w/ 512MB RAM



Cheers,
Monica

 

Hi Monica,

So, just to clarify, this is happening only during scene loading, and when the scene is actually playing everything is fine?

Usually the pink shader error is due to not setting the unity version state... by default it is set to the pro version, and therefore it automatically selects the "pro" shaders. To switch the version, go to the "Water Module_Quality" component on the "Water_Module" game object in your scene, then under the "Unity Version State" drop down menu, select "Unity" (instead of "Unity Pro").

if you're already doing this then you can FORCE suimono to use the basic shader by removing the "Water Module_quality" component completely from the "Water_Module" game object... then on the water surface material drop down selecting the "Suimono/water_basic" shader manually. And then also on the "mat_depthShading" material, manually select the "Suimono/effect_refractViewDepthBasic" shader.

I'm pretty sure this is what the issue is but if you still have shader errors please let me know!

All the best,
-Justin

 

OP has been great for support. Anyone reading, you will not be left out to freeze with any issues.

Worth every penny

 

Thank You VicToMeyeZR!

 

Just a simple question, is there a way to make the shader do water moving in a direction like in a river?

 

Hi Zede05,

You can set the water to flow in any direction by changing the x and y UV scrolling attributes. In the case of a curvy river as long as the UVs of the river mesh are setup properly you can set the direction and it will continue to curve along the river... the below is a very quick and crude setup, but it shows you how the UV is setup and that the animations continue around the curve.

 

I want to be able to enter the water as realistically as possible, with a transition that looks something like the attached photo. Any way to do this?

http://www.hdwallpapersarena.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ocean_life_wallpapers_001.jpg

 

Hi Bigkahuna, This isn't currently possible with Suimono... however I've actually been working on this type of "aquarium effect" for the 2.0 update. Hopefully I'll be able to show some screenshots and some updates on 2.0 in the next week or two. Thanks for your interest!

 

Thanks, I'll be watching this thread for an update.

Are you still working on adding an ocean surface to your products? I recall you announced this some months back but never heard any updates on this.

 

Yes that is still in the works as well... My ultimate goal would be to add a slide-able scale that simulates a range of water, from calm to massive ocean swells. Though, I've definitely run into some difficulties in trying to make this realistic, as well as performance friendly. Stay tuned though, I'll be detailing a 2.0 preview as soon as possible.

 

I'm considering buying it, but I have 3 questions:

1. How well does it work with Unity Free? You mention in the first post in this thread that it does work, but with the loss of some visual fidelity. Is the only downside visual, and how large a downside is this? (A screenshot would be wonderful)
2. You mentioned buoyancy. Do things bob in the water?
3. Are there wakes? If not, how hard would this be to implement?

 

Hi Kofthefens,

The difference in quality between free and pro is limited to the advanced render effects that Pro allows, so for example water refraction, dynamic reflection, and depth fogging will not work. This is all handled automatically by Suimono so you can setup your scene once and not really have to worry about changing it in the future if you ever upgrade to Pro. You can see somewhat of a comparison in the screenshot at the bottom of this post. The demo will also allow you to switch between Unity and Unity Pro to get an idea of the differences... check out the demo here: http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/demo

Buoyancy is calculated for any object that has a collider and rigidbody, and you can also control it on a per-object basis by attaching a buoyancy script to those objects. This allows you to set buoyancy amounts to be higher and lower as you need them. you can see this in action in the webplayer demo, the main "character" has a certain buoyancy setting, but also you can instantiate little test boxes that have a lighter buoyancy factor by pressing the spacebar.

There doesn't come with a specific wake effect (i.e. for boats etc). There is splash effects and a water disturbance effect along with ripples (check the demo)... these react to collider and rigidbody objects, and you could easily attach a number of these to a boat object to get a larger "wake"-like effect. You can also simply enlarge the water disturbance effect, and/or speed it up by tweaking some of the component settings.

I appreciate your interest in Suimono, let me know if you have additional questions!

 

Thanks to the speedy reply! It looks great.

 

@Chingwa - Still think you've got the prettiest water available.

One question about the web demo, the waves seem to be refracting as they pass the curved shoreline, is this coded into SUIMONO? Don't know why I didn't notice that before but it's very nicely done.

Also regarding boat wakes, I'm guessing that you're doing the splashes and ripples with a sequence of normal maps? If so, would it be possible to create more realistic boat wakes by changing these normal maps?

 

Hi Bigkahuna, Thanks for the compliment

Currently, the waves get wrapped around existing objects based on a flowmap texture that needs to be created per scene. This is done separate from the actual water surface, so they don't get refracted along with the below-surface refractions... though, for 2.0, I'm almost certain I have a good technique for automating this wave function (just a little more testing to do) and the waves should be integrated with the rest of the water surface.

As for the ripples, yes they are calculated off an indexed/animated normal map texture. This can of course be replaced with a normal map of your choice. The current texture is based on an animating "ring" of ripples.

For 2.0, I'm looking at techniques to do the ripples as actual geometry, along with ocean-type waves and shoreline interaction. I've coded some interesting prototypes, but they all have scaleability issues. I'd like to be able to do this without DX11 tessellation because I have a feeling most users aren't yet requiring dx11 for their projects, even though it's an awesome feature (and anyway Mac support would be out). Waves done exclusively with the GPU tessellation also creates problems when you need those waves to interact with the Unity physics system... this is less than ideal for Suimono which is why I've been looking into an alternative solution.

Should have some previews up soon, hope everyone stays tuned!

 

Chingwa, I love your work. Buying Suimono shortly.

Can you tell me what ground textures or shaders you are using in your demo videos?

 

Thanks dbrian! The demo scene from the Suimono video is really old... I haven't even opened that project for some time. However pretty much everything in the video, textures, shaders, environment, etc I did myself. Was there something specific that caught your eye?

 

Most everything about it. The vegetation, trees, texture color choices. That scene isn't included with Suimono, is it?