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PlayWay Water - high quality water system

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by zuzzu, Oct 9, 2015.

  1. ArrMeeR

    ArrMeeR

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    I've got problem with water. When i am running any project with this water i can see objects shaking on screen. Its working only on fastest quality. I've got AMD graphic card
     
  2. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Hey. You are using the old version which had issues on AMD. Please send me your Invoice No via PM to get the new one.
     
  3. LightenFor

    LightenFor

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    Can I use this asset to make huge oceansphere for planet?
     
  4. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    A review said: Doesn't work with SteamVR / HTC Vive when building a standalone" This is a bit of an issue as I would like to develop for Vive.

    Thanks!

    Looks really amazing. I was thinking of developing a full on sail boat simulator with this. You think it's doable or are the buoyancy physics not appropriate for that?

    Cheers
     
  5. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    No. Waves always point up for optimization reasons.

    It works fine with recent updates on Vive. The earlier issues has been sorted out.

    New physics simulation is very good in my opinion. All real world forces are there - buoyancy, drag and direct wave forces. You may wait for the final 1.1 release to see it in action in updated demos. It is delayed a lot because many issues has appeared after Unity 5.3 was released and I had to make proper fixes.
     
    strich likes this.
  6. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Very awesome. A few more questions if you don't mind:

    Do you calculate the the buoyancy physics alongside the velocity of the object in the water? For example, do you differentiate between a following sea and waves coming from the front? Another example, will the object go up from the back first and then front if the wave is going faster than the object? Or waves coming in from the side?

    Do you calculate swell (long period waves usually generated from far away) versus current? Do you allow for wind over current effects?

    Can you simulate wake (leveraging velocity of the object) at all and the visual effects from the breaking waves that it creates?

    If you don't do some of these things, how hard is it to modify what you provide to add them?

    Thanks!
     
  7. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    I tried the ceto demo here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47203

    I noticed that when you turn the boat or wind direction with high waves it breaks immersion. Not sure if that's just a problem with the demo though. Depending on the direction of the waves, the buoyancy impact should really change.

    The wake particle effect wasn't that great, either. The "choppyness" slider didn't do anything and I didn't find the foam particularly convincing.

    I tried the water volume demo here as well; http://popcannibal.com/watervolume/WebPlayer/WaterVolumeWebplayer.html

    Hard to say what was happening though as I couldn't control wave direction and wave speed seemed a bit slow even when maxed out. I think in theory they were trying for accurate buoyancy effect but I didn't see anything that said they had.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2015
  8. tgraupmann

    tgraupmann

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    Is it possible to include a WebGL and Standalone exe demo? I'm trying the webplayer demos in Firefox and it's crashing my graphics driver.

    Intel HD Graphics Drivers for Windows 8(R).
    Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000

    I tried both web players in the store.
    https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47961

    I'm running Windows 10 (64-bit) with 16G of RAM.

    It's a MacMini (quad-core) last to be shipped before Tim Cook axed it down to only dual-core MacMinis.

    http://graphics-cards.specout.com/l/2459/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000

    I'll dig around and find whatever shader model it has...


    http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...for-3rd-generation-intel-core-processors.html
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2015
  9. jashan

    jashan

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    Ooops - that was my review, just fixed this part. @zuzzu has been super-helpful and super-responsive. The issue with SteamVR / HTC Vive actually turned out to be a Unity 5.3 issue (I could do build with 5.2 to SteamVR without a problem). But he still found a way to work around this issue in Unity. With PS4, it seems like we're getting closer to actually having it work as well (there still were issues with the last RC but there's definitely also progress in that area).

    I have another question, though:

    Are you planning to start using Reflection Probes / SSRR once the built-in SSRR from Unity is ready? This would be quite awesome IMHO.
     
  10. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Hi,

    I'm back from my holidays and I'm working on the next version basing on your feedback during Christmas. You've shared very useful reports, thanks a lot! :)

    Buoyancy is computed for a number of randomly distributed samples on the object at each physics step. It's not computed for the whole object at once, so all the effects that you describe should be there.

    It was requested a lot and I need it too actually. It will land there as soon as I will finally make the shorelines ;)

    Not at the moment, sorry. I will work on this at some point though.

    You may render into local wave maps right now, but if you are not in hurry I would recommend you to wait for it.

    Thanks for the report. I will look into this. I think I've seen this gpu somewhere around.

    I will share a standalone demo as soon as I will finish the 1.1 release and all 5.3 issues will be sorted out.

    I'm currently looking into this to understand how it works and yeah I'm definitely going to support SSRR.
     
    jashan and Rycons like this.
  11. strongbox3d

    strongbox3d

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    Yeeeaaahhhhhhh for the shorelines!! I can't wait!
     
  12. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Can you do wind over current as well? It shouldn't be that hard, the physics aren't that complicated. Certainly if you're doing additive swell, it should be fairly straightforward.
     
  13. ng93

    ng93

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    Would this work for small areas like baths and flooded rooms?
     
  14. fatality674

    fatality674

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    Any plans for ship wake effects? It's make or break for my purchase.

    From the videos it looks nice but without a playable demo (AMD) it's impossible to buy blind.
     
  15. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Fatality, he said there is no wake.

    here's my priority:

    wake
    chop
    wind over current
    swell

    This is all assuming buoyancy is correct and objects will lift from front to back, back to front, side to side depending on the wave action. A demo where we can control wind speed and current and drop in large buoyant 3d object would help confirm this.
     
    John-G likes this.
  16. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    There is no distinct current in my water, but only wind waves actually ;) Why would you need it anyway?

    Yes, it works fine for these things. I wouldn't recommend buying it solely for this purpose though.

    It's there. What do you mean exactly?

    You may do this in the Weather Demo (it's in the first post). It's outdated a bit, if physics is what you are after though.
     
  17. creat327

    creat327

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    do you have an apk to test the mobile beta version so we can see the speed?
     
  18. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    I hope to work on a proper mobile support next month (February). I will publish demos for them at that time.
     
  19. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    I tried the weather demo, I couldn't control the direction of the wind but perhaps I missed the option. Also, the galleon was far in the background so I couldn't really see what it was doing.

    Your youtube video also goes dark when you have stormy waves, which made it hard to figure out what it was doing.

    Current (often caused by tides) is important because it controls how an object moves in the water. You have a galleon in many of your pictures and current would be a critical factor in how ships of that era would chart their course. Sailboats even now use current quite a bit when charting. Once you have current than you need to allow for wind over current which controls wave dimensions.

    http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=16395.0
     
  20. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Thanks, that's a good lecture :) Anyway, I won't be able to implement this stuff soon, as it doesn't add much visual quality and that's my priority for now.

    You may wait a bit for the new demo. I'm done with most of the work for the next update.
     
  21. bartm4n

    bartm4n

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    Is it possible to have the global fog affect the water? I like the effect that it provides for the terrain, but it looks odd where the terrain meets the water without it being applied to both. Thanks!
     
  22. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    I've fixed fog issues on Unity 5.3 on my development machine. I'm pretty busy at the moment, but I should be able to export a new version today. I will send it to you as soon as I will upload it somewhere.
     
    bartm4n likes this.
  23. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Just a small information for Time of Day users: if you would like to use TOD_Scattering effect along with water, you may make it compatible by opening TOD_Scattering.cs and commeting out [ImageEffectOpaque] line.

    This will also make this effect work on transparent objects (which is wrong).

    It works fine for me though.
     
    hopeful and elbows like this.
  24. bartm4n

    bartm4n

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    That would be spectacular! Thank you for your hard work!
     
  25. jashan

    jashan

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    One idea:

    I know that almost everyone is doing this but I still find it rather annoying: A lot of Asset Store packages include the Unity Standard Assets which may change with every version of Unity. Right now, whenever I'm importing PlayWay Water, I need to manually uncheck all that "Standard Unity Stuff" that I really don't need to have included in PlayWay Water (which is made harder due to Unity not letting me disable everything under Standard Assets with a single checkbox untick ... filed to Unity as (Case 758597) Import Package needs Checkbox on Each Level in Hierarchy).

    What I think would be very nice instead: Just include everything that's actually part of PlayWay Water in the main package and add one package with the examples. In other words, when importing PlayWay Water, all you have at first is just what's really necessary, plus one package that has everything that the example scenes need.

    That way, users that are interested in the examples just need to double-click this package and they get all they want - but users that are no longer interested in the examples don't have to mess around with irrelevant stuff. This is something I had done with the addons in ScoreFlash (that required 3rd party packages to properly compile) in earlier versions and it worked fairly well.

    It's actually something that should be a standard procedure for the Asset Store IMHO: If examples need Standard Assets stuff, include them as a package inside the package.
     
    Quatum1000 and hopeful like this.
  26. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    That's a good idea to approach this, thanks. For some reason I've assumed that you can disable a whole folder at once.
     
    jashan likes this.
  27. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Well, to get realistic visual effects it's usually good to start with a complete and accurate underlying physical model. Rag doll physics using real skeletons, muscles, ligaments, etc are a good example of this.
     
  28. Quatum1000

    Quatum1000

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    This approach from Jashan (this comment is worth a like) is very basic that every asset from the store should follow.
    It's so damn ugly and wastin' your time to fiddle out what can be deleted and whats not. :confused:
     
    jashan likes this.
  29. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Sure, that's what I'm doing :) There are simply more important physical phenomena at the moment to include there like shoreline waves and swell.

    Sorry for causing you a trouble. I will comply to this starting with the next version.
     
  30. Quatum1000

    Quatum1000

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    Nah, is all Okay my friend. :) I'm still waiting for my suggestion (quoted) that will hopefully included anytime.;)
     
  31. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Yeah, shoreline waves must be very hard and I agree they are definitely highest priority from the perspective of people who want your product.

    However, I think you should look into wind over current a bit more. Most games usually involve land around water where tide/current is present and swell is more of an open ocean sort of phenomena.
     
  32. Quatum1000

    Quatum1000

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    Can't agree. I don't need shorelines in the 1st row. The most required thing is to have different amplitude waves areas. So it's possible to have rough see in some distance and at the coast line or port more gentle amplitude. Not everyones developer game plays on water only. Did you ever watch the of shore line at storm? Looks pretty ugly. :rolleyes:
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2016
  33. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Yeah, I don't need them either :) But I appreciate that from a product development point of view they are priority #1. Most gamers will encounter water at the shoreline and all the shoreline solutions I have seen are really awful.

    But if you're doing open ocean wind over current + swell are necessary for doing something realistic. If you add a boat, then wake is a must have.

    If you want to see a great AAA example of a boat on water (mostly calm though :( ), look at witcher 3. Really well done.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2016
  34. AlanGreyjoy

    AlanGreyjoy

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    has anyone got this to work on a character with a rigidbody?

    It's either bouncing around on the bottom of the ocean, or soaring 99999999999999999 in the Y value lol.
     
  35. chasse

    chasse

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    Some of these feature requests seem unreasonable. For the tides/currents, you can simply just have your own constant force applied via wind or trigger zones which would give you exceptional efficient and control. There's simply no reason to have these things included when Unity gives you the basic tools.

    Also... shorelines are another challenge that are pretty game-specific and a universal solution wouldn't apply well. Compound this with the fact that very few games (Battlefield 4 has the best I've seen working in multiplayer) have even attempted to do shorelines, and most of them do not do crests (outside of basic animated meshes meant to fake it and aren't synced over network). I bought this tool knowing that it wouldn't come with a shoreline system because I planned on creating my own custom one for it.

    What is a reasonable request, and the author has already been developing it, is to have wave points be directly and efficiently affected (and networked) somehow, which would save me quite some time from having to do any future modifications such as shorelines.

    Since a few people seem to be interested... https://www.fxguide.com/featured/assassins-creed-iii-the-tech-behind-or-beneath-the-action/ is a good overview for doing boat games. They use a system of spheres (highly efficient) to react to buoyancy rather than a mesh collider (that this plugin uses in its examples).
     
  36. strich

    strich

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    Nice post @chasse - That link looks great I'll definitely have a read.

    Could be you have a solution in mind already, but I would advise against trying to network sync 2-way water interaction. You should be able to get away with the currently existing 1-way water simulation sync and perform local visual-only deformation of wave points.
     
  37. chasse

    chasse

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    If you wanted to have special freak waves happen at certain locations that you want visuals to match the authoritative physics, you're going to need a sync at least a time variable for animations... that was my plan for doing anything like wave crests which I'd simply just use the already synced time in this plugin to determine where animations should be interpolated to with no extra network overhead.

    There are instances, however, where I may want water to deform significantly and unpredictability (randomly or player driven). These would need to have some basic data passed through the network, but nothing major other than positions and forces.
     
  38. blazespinnaker

    blazespinnaker

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    Wave structure is controlled by wind over current. If you want realistic waves you need a correct physical model.
     
  39. elbows

    elbows

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    Realtime game engine simulations are usually about approximations, compromises, etc, which is still a step up from the 'completely fake it' technique games often have to use. So asking for correct physical modelling of this sort of thing is going to be considered a bit exotic unless the overhead is low.
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2016
  40. UltraTM

    UltraTM

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    Hi,

    how can i get a nice underwater ambient?

    playing with all sliders and values. But its always very dark. Would like to have it more blue and to see more underwater.
     
  41. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Yay :) What components do you use on your character, besides the rigidbody?

    Thanks, you are correct about the shorelines. That's why it takes me that long, because I don't want to release something that will run fine only in the samples :) Especially I want the shoreline waves to affect physical world, which is very hard to combine with visual quality.

    I will probably release direct wave generation along with the shorelines as these are being built on top of this system.

    Hi, you can use low underwater absorption color in the water profile to make it bright.
     
  42. UltraTM

    UltraTM

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    damn it yeah the only one i didnt changed for testing ^^ thx

    Is it possible to have more water surfaces in one scene?

    looks like its infinite
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2016
  43. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    This was expanded and optimized a lot in 1.1. Contact me if you would like to get an update.

    You may either use custom mesh for this (recommended) or use additive water volumes.
     
  44. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    Hi @zuzzu.

    I always seem to be looking for a new water system, and here I go again. I've bought a few already, and had the opportunity to play with several others doing contract work, but I've never been that happy with any of them. I keep going back to Unity's native Water4, which doesn't look that great, but at least doesn't cause a lot of other problems for me. I've played with Suimono and Triton, but didn't like Suimono that much, and Triton is too expensive, plus seemed like a bit of a resource hog.

    Now I'm looking at either Ceto or PlayWay as my next purchase. They both look fantastic in the demos, but have a few feature differences that make deciding between them difficult. Both are quite expensive, with Ceto being slightly cheaper, but I don't want to decide based on price alone. Both have weather, flotation, and underwater effects. Ceto claims it can raise areas for inland water bodies and rivers, change the wave height near coastlines, and change the water color in shallow bays and inlets, which would all be nice. PlayWay supports multiple water bodies of any shape, and has a masking solution for inside boat hulls, which is really great. What it doesn't have at the moment though, if I'm reading the comments correctly, is shoreline foam and Global Fog support, which are critical for me. I'm not sure how well Ceto supports these either though. I've read comments about using a Gaia script with it to generate shoreline foam, which is OK, since I own Gaia as well, but I haven't seen any convincing examples of the results.

    Based on some of the other comments, Ceto has a few quirks that could make using it in my own scenes difficult, so I'm leaning toward PlayWay right now. I can hold off deciding for a while, and work on other things until the features I want are available, but not forever. You've said you already have a fog solution ready to release. Any idea what the time frame is for shoreline foam? Or might the Gaia shoreline generator script work with PlayWay as well? I'd assume that adding foam using a 3rd party app wouldn't look as nice as a fully integrated solution, but I need to know where things stand at the moment, and what to expect in the immediate future before opening my wallet. :confused:

    Thanks.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2016
    montyfi likes this.
  45. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Hi, thanks for interest in my asset.

    Fog is fully functional right now. That was one of the incompatibilities between initial release and Unity 5.3.

    You may wait for the shorelines just a bit to make your final decision. I will have a lot of time for PW Water starting with Monday and hopefully I will finish shorelines in a week or so.

    I had delays earlier (Unity 5.3 release, shader memory bug etc.), but I don't think that something like this is going to happen this month.

    That happens with each physical water shader starting with Triton, same here.
     
    Shodan0101 likes this.
  46. FargleBargle

    FargleBargle

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    That's great news. A few weeks to a month isn't a problem for me, as long as it's on your short list of new features. It would be nice to see some pics or a video once you have it working though. Thanks for the quick reply. :)
     
    Shodan0101 likes this.
  47. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    So far, PlayWay has worked very well for me. Shorelines is the only feature I'm waiting on that I feel is important. If its quality is as good as the rest of the product, i'll be a very satisfied customer.
     
    ThunderTruck likes this.
  48. jashan

    jashan

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    And - awesome news: PlayWay Water now also works on PS4!!! This is not in the released, version, yet, but I have just seen it running on my development kit :)
     
    derkoi, jc_lvngstn and zuzzu like this.
  49. D.T

    D.T

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    Hi,zuzzu
    Your Demo Looks fantastic! I want to use the package in my project!
    I want to know that Mobile devices support is still a beta?
     
  50. zuzzu

    zuzzu

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    Hi D.T,

    Thanks :) Yes, it's still beta until mid-February. I don't recommend buying it with mobile platforms in mind until then.