SUIMONO - Customizeable Water System [RELEASED]

Well actually now that I think about it, the trees were most certainly made by larsBertram... you can see some of his great terrain work here (all highly recommended!) https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/?#publisher/408

However everything else was from a personal project I was working on at the time, which has now become part of a different project. That scene is not included with Suimono, sorry! However... the upcoming 2.0 update will have a much more interesting demo scene than the one that is included right now.

 

Thank you! I apologize if this has been asked already, but will there be an upgrade price for 2.0?

 

nope, you're the first to ask.

NOTE: Any customer who has purchased the current version of Suimono will of course be able to download the 2.0 update for free. There is no upgrade fee.

That being said I have been thinking about raising the price for version 2.0 once it's released, but I haven't decided on the final price point. Currently Suimono is selling for $65, and this price is likely to increase by $15 or $20. But again, nothing has been decided yet. There's still a couple weeks of dev time for 2.0 at minimum, and I'll be talking specifics as it gets closer to release.

 

@chingwa I'm not sure that's a good idea. I think increasing the price will scare some new buyers away. I know I usually hesitate when I buy something that costs $80...

And by the way, I can't wait to see 2.0!

 

Hi Mr MMORPG (great name BTW!)

Yeah, It's always a give or take with the price-point, which is why nothing is set in stone yet. Once I start showing some previews perhaps I can get a better consensus on what the new features would be worth to people. Thanks for your feedback!

 

I might just buy this. But before that i want to know is the water global? or is it possible to make water zones?

 

Hi J-F,

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by global.... you can apply the water to a mesh, either the mesh plane that comes with Suimono, or your own custom mesh object. Then these meshes can be placed anywhere in your scene that you wish. So I guess, no it isn't global, you can certainly define exactly where you want the water to be, and not be.

 

can we get some screenshot or features that will be available on 2.0 ?
will mobile be supported?

 

@creat327 - screenshots, yes very soon... mobile support... this is certainly in the planning... I can't say 100% "yes" just quite yet, still have to do some testing in this respect. Stay tuned though I should have a post on all this stuff in a week or so.

 

I just purchased this. It looks great, but I have a few quick comments. I am using Unity Free. These are just annoyances, not game-breakers. The water itself still displays fine.

1. These errors are thrown.

Code (csharp):

1. Material doesn't have a float or range property '_AnimSpeed'
2. UnityEngine.Material:GetFloat(String)
3. water_animWaves:Update() (at Assets/Imported/SUIMONO - WATER SYSTEM/SCRIPTS/water_animWaves.js:27)Material doesn't have a color property '_SurfaceColor'
4. UnityEngine.Material:GetColor(String)
5. water_animWaves:Update() (at Assets/Imported/SUIMONO - WATER SYSTEM/SCRIPTS/water_animWaves.js:51)Material doesn't have a float or range property '_AnimSpeed'
6. UnityEngine.Material:GetFloat(String)
7. water_animation:Update() (at Assets/Imported/SUIMONO - WATER SYSTEM/SCRIPTS/water_animation.js:29)
8. Material doesn't have a float or range property '_AnimSpeed'
9. UnityEngine.Material:GetFloat(String)
10. water_animScrolling:Update() (at Assets/Imported/SUIMONO - WATER SYSTEM/SCRIPTS/water_animScrolling.js:27)
11.  

2. With the WATER_Surface, a bunch of errors are thrown whenever I select it in the editor. This means it is extremely slow to edit anything there, so as a workaround I have attached it under another gameobject that I can mess around with the transform of. All of these errors thrown look like

Code (csharp):

1. Material doesn't have a float or range/texture/color property blah

This makes it extremely hard to edit anything on the WATER_surface. There are a lot of these, maybe 50 or so.

3. Is there any way to cause a wake? A wake is essentially just a bunch of ripples in a row, so is there a way to have it create tons of ripples?

4. Is there a way to make waves look more serious?

5. There's always a bit of water that looks like this, and does not go away.

 

Hi Kofthefens, thanks a lot for your purchase!

I just want to double check... did you switch the "unity_version" attribute to "unity" rather than "unity pro"? See installation step 4 in the online documentation here:

http://http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/documentation/#_quickstart

4. by default, Suimono is set-up to use Unity Pro. If you're using the free version of Unity you'll need to go to the waterModule_Quality component on the Water_Module object and switch it from Unity Pro to Unity.
(I realize now that this step 4 wasn't in the quickstart readme, I'll add that in the next update!)

1 2. ERRORS:
Most of these errors are being caused because the components can't find a relevant Water_Surface shader... This might be because you moved the Water_Surface away from the WATER_Module object...?

also there are a few components that by default operate in editor mode, which may also be why it is running too slow for you in the editor. you can try the following edits to stop this and hopefully speed it up so you can put the surface component back as a a child of WATER_Module...

a) in the /SCRIPTS folder, open the water_presets.js script and comment out line 5... so it's "//@script ExecuteInEditMode()"
b) in the /SCRIPTS folder, open the water_reflectionMirror script and comment out line 7... so it's "//[ExecuteInEditMode]".

3. Wakes:
There aren't specific "wake" effects, but the ripples and splashes can be sped up on an individual object basis. Included with Suimono is a component called object_splashEffects. this isn't a required object, but you can optionally add it to your boat gameobject (or any other object with a collider and rigidbody) to manually set the ripple/splash emission times and sizing.

4. Waves:
For "serious" waves, can you elaborate? do you mean 3D mesh waves? If so then no, currently Suimono doesn't create 3d mesh waves.... BUT this will be a feature in version 2.0 which I'm working on now, and should be available before too long. version 2.0 will of course be a free update for all current Suimono users.

5. Flowmap:
what you are seeing is the example wave flow texture from the demo. Currently you'll need to create your own flowmap for these waves... I've created a tutorial to help guide people through this process (it's not too complicated, just requires a little image editing...) Take a look here:
http://tanukidigital.com/forum/index.php?topic=297.0

I'm a little concerned about the errors you're getting. If my above suggestions don't help perhaps you can email me a screenshot of your scene/suimono objects setup? You can email me directly using konnichiwa[at]tanukidigital.com

 

The version attribute was set to Unity.

1. I tried commenting out those lines. That fixes all but the first of the errors in the section. (These errors are not thrown in your example scene)
2. These errors were unchanged by your suggestions. These errors still exist in your example scene.
3. This should work, after some messing around.
4. I meant waves that look larger. I'm excited for 2.0
5. That did the trick.

Thanks for the speedy response.

 

So wait, you get some of these errors even in the supplied example scene? Can you tell me what version of Unity you're running?

So, just to double check... the wave_overlay object is a child of WATER_Surface, which itself is a child of WATER_Module... correct? like the below screen?

 

Yes. I am getting these errors in the example scene, and my screen does look like your screenshot. I am running 4.1.5f1, which I believe is the latest. The water does look fine, it's just the errors are annoying. They only occur when I have the water_surface selected in the editor.

 

OK, I'll download 4.1.5 and see if I can recreate these errors.

 

Well, on my end even with 4.1.5 everything works the way it ought to. The only way I can recreate these errors is to use "Unity Pro" instead of "Unity" in the quality component, so perhaps there is something not working properly with this component. Here's what I'd like you to try...

1) on the WATER_Module object, disable or remove the Water_Module_quality component.
2) on the WATER_Surface object, manually select the Suimono/water_basic shader.
3) on the effect_refract_plane object, manually select the Suimono /effect_refracttionViewDepthBasic shader.
4) on the effect_dropletsParticle object manually select the Suimono/effect_refractDropletsBasic shader.
5) on the effect_water_fade object, manually select the Suimono/effect_refractDropletsBasic shader.
6) under splash_effects, on the splash_rings_normal_prefab object, manually select the effect_refractDropletsBasic shader.

Let me know if this helps fix your errors.

 

Thanks! It works if I only do step 2, and nothing else. Much easier to work with now.

 

OK Great! You might want to go ahead and do the rest of them as well... it seems like the water_quality component is bugging out on you for some reason. You don't actually need this component as it's mainly just there to switch relevant shaders on-the-fly... so if you set them manually you can get rid of it altogether.

Let me know if you run into any further issues!

 

Hey hey, I just bought your product and so far I'm very pleased! I'm brand new to unity and I'm using the free version so I'm still learning alot however I wanted to ask you a question about something I experience in my scene when I use Suimono. I notice in the lower left corner of my scene while I'm working theres a strange looking glitch where it seems to project an upside down distorted view of my project. Can you help me out on this one?

 

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for supporting Suimono! The screenshot looks like it's projecting the mirror reflection view of your scene. This could be related to the SCRIPTS/water_reflectionMirror component.... try opening this script and commenting out line 7...

so changing it from "[ExecuteInEditMode]" to be "//[ExecuteInEditMode]".

Actually, since you're using the free version and won't get dynamic reflections anyway, on your WATER_Surface game object you can simply remove the water_reflectionMirror component altogether, it'll might increase your performance a bit as well.

Let me know if you still have problems after trying the above!

 

Sounds excellent!

Would it be easy to render a flow (like a river) with this plugin?

EDIT: Also, is it possible to use Suimono on any mesh or only on a plane?

 

Hi Amfu,

Suimono can be used with any mesh.

River flow is very easy as long as you have the river mesh UV's set up properly... take a look at this post here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/14...EASED/page15?p=1246819&viewfull=1#post1246819

 

Thanks Chingwa!

Seams perfect for me and my voxel engine.

 

that did the trick! Thanks so much.

 

Is there a way to make water invisible within a certain area? I have a boat, bobbing in the water. When the boat goes partially underwater, the deck area is flooded, despite the sides of the boat being above water. Is there a way to dynamically make a section of water invisible?

 

Hi Koftehens,

The best way to handle what you're trying to do is by changing the depth mask and render queues of the boat interior. Essentially you would need the interior of your boat to have it's own material/shader that writes to the Unity depth buffer AFTER the water plane is written. Take a look at the Unity Wiki on this here: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=DepthMask

 

Hi Chingwa,

It's me again.

I've read the documentation of Suimono and understand how UV scrolling works, but I still have some questions:

1) Does UV animation script impact physics? In other words, will a floating object be moved to follow the flow?

2) Would it be easy for me to customize UV animation script so its speed depends on normals of the mesh? What I'd like to be able to do, is to render a flow (i.e. scroll the texture) on polygons which have a normal.y < 1, and the lower would be normal.y, the faster it would be scrolling.

Thanks!

 

Hi Amfu,

The animation settings will impact physics if you want it to... you can set the "Water_Force" variable on the "Water_animScrolling" component, and this will actually apply force to objects that are interacting with the water in the XY direction you specify. For this to work properly however, the object that you want to apply force to needs to have the "object_buoyancy" component attached to it...

As for customizing scipts, Suimono is completely open and you can customize it however you like. I haven't personally looked into setting flow via the normal value, but it ought to be possible... the best way would probably be to just do a simple raycast on the water_surface at the object position, read the normal, and then cross-reference that value based on the set animation speed. If you need help in this regard just let me know.

(that's a great idea btw... I'll consider implementing this type of function into 2.0... )

 

I bought this product a month ago and all i end up with is bright pink water rendering the effects useless for my needs. Having to use basic shaders to correct the problem makes the water look bad and unimpressive. Please fix this problem because if it cant work with a lot of the computers out there it should be priced much much less then advertised.

 

Hi massfeedback,

maybe you can give me a bit more feedback on the problem you're having... I assume you've looked at the quick-start instructions, and specifically set the correct unity version state... take a look here...

http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/documentation/#_quickstart

Otherwise, please let me know more info about your setup... Unity version, computer platform, etc.

 

Hi chingwa,

Thanks for the response. I bought the package back in may because I was impressed with the demos. In fact I planned on buying all of your items but haven't revisited your store since I set Suimono on the back burner until there were new updates. I looked over all the Info it shipped with and went to the forum for solutions at the time i first experienced the issue. Anyhow, I just glanced over the link that you furnished in your reply and I am hopeful that the info will aid in getting Suimono to work on my system. That is if my card is supported! I think that the page was yet to be published back in May when i purchased the water system. Anyhow, thanks. I'll let you know how it goes

 

Other than in the earliest versions I haven't gotten any feedback about video card problems or any other incompatibilites... Suimono ought to now be running as expected on practically any modern computer setup. If you do run into any further problems, let me know and we'll get it all sorted out

 

When is the 2.0 release planned for?
What features are planned?

 

Hi Kofthefens, 2.0 is planned for as soon as physically possible! I'm still deciding what the final features will be but hope to have an announcement / preview up on the forums in the next week. Actual release should not be too long now... once the features are announced there will still be a debug period before it's submitted to the asset store.

 

Hi I don't know if this was asked before, but would you be able to add an animated water surface to your package that can generate real 3D waves?

 

Yes.

For those interested, below are a few preview images of Suimono 2.0. Keep in mind this is still work-in-progress and incomplete. I'm not going to list all the updated features quite yet, but below you can see 3D waves, improved underwater effects, and auto-shoreline calculation. I'd love to hear everyone's comments...

 

wow... if you got that working on mobile, i'll be happy to donate my soul in exchange for your brain

 

OMG, this is just amazing! Looking forward to the release ...

 

The screenshots of the improvements for 2.0 are looking really good, a video of the 3D ocean waves would be even better.

What sort of "physics" will be included with the 3D ocean waves, simple buoyancy driven by water height or something else?
Will this be strictly Unity version 4.x compatible and require Pro?
You know that as soon as you release the 3D ocean waves somebody's going to ask for boat wakes.

 

Video... yes, but not quite yet!

For physics, buoyancy is definitely included... this is upgraded a bit from the simple on/off physics from the current version, and can be used to simulate more advanced buoyancy for large objects such as boats. But beyond this I'm working to incorporate applied force based not only based on a set direction, as it works now, but by wave magnitude as well... so objects will essentially be "pushed" by the waves instead of just bouyant in the Y-axis... but again, still work-in-progress.

Version 2.0 will be compatible with Unity 3.5.6 and above... pro is not required (but will be recommended for full visual fidelity). And the big question about mobile compatibility is still yet to be determined, but I should have a better idea in the next week or so though. I have a new Android device arriving on my doorstep over the weekend to help me with some testing

Yeah, boat wakes has been big request actually and something I still need to look into once the essential systems are nailed down.

 

The buoyancy and the pro effects were the main reason I bought this water. Boat wakes would be a fantastic addition, I hope that the automatic shore detection will also detect the shape of the boat hull and display some foam around the boat?
The mobile thing is not so important to me but down the road would be nice if it can be done.

 

The shoreline detection function automatically flattens out the 3D waves as they get near the shore... this is determined on a per-layer basis so you could also have this effect your boat objects as well, though you may not actually WANT to. However the foam is more of a global setting and will automatically appear on any object that is interacting with the water surface... terrain, boats, etc.

 

If I understand what you're saying, no that would not be desirable and would be very unrealistic for the ocean to flatten around boats. And for that matter it wouldn't look very realistic around small islands or rocks that are surrounded by deep water. So I'm guessing this effect is either "all or none", you either get flattening and foam or no flattening and no foam? Have you tried projectors on your ocean's surface? Might that work to add foam to a 3D surface? (That's how I create boat wakes using the "community" ocean project's shader.)

 

@bigkahuna - I realize that, perhaps more than anyone else on this forum, you are on a quest for the most awesome and realistic water possible... so I really appreciate your feedback

The shoreline detection and the foam are separate functions from each other. I'll describe a little bit about them below which should give you a better idea of how they work....

Foam is calculated based on an edge/depth detection technique and can be adjusted by color, alpha, spread and scale. It generates foam based on a layered texture, so the closer it is to the edge the "thicker" the foam will look, while as it gets further away it will "disintegrate" (rather than just have an alpha trail-off). Below I'm showing it affecting shoreline, but it will react just the same to any object that is intersecting the water surface.




The shoreline detection however is included as part of the 3D wave calculation. It's included in order to create a consistent shoreline effect... such as on a beach, or anywhere you have the need to limit where 3D waves will be projected. It's implemented by calculating the wave height at any given point and cross referencing the world terrain/object height at that point (you can specify this calculation by layer). Additionally, the smoothing can be adjusted via a height variable which will affect how soon the smoothing will start to be calculated. In the image below I've exaggerated the waves just to illustrate what it is going on and how the height adjustment affects the shoreline creation.



I'm sure a video would get this across much better than some screenshots and a bunch of text. I'll have a video up once I work out the final feature set. Using projectors to implement foam is actually an intriguing idea. I'll look into this once I explore the wake function. I also can see it useful for other aspects of foam generation as well...

 

Yes, it's been a very long quest indeed. Thank you for the detailed explanation, the results of what you're doing are very impressive.

 

Just checked this thread. Quick question: how the **** are you able to make water look so good?!! More seriously:

1. Are you planning on implementing wakes in this? You can simulate wakes in the current version by having it ripple a lot, but will there be a better way?
2. Will the updates be mostly available in Unity free as well? I am mostly interested in the 3d waves
3. How dynamic is the wave generation? In the current version, you have to generate a wavemap in photoshop. Furthermore, if you change the landscape mid game, will it adjust? What about with some colliders stuck in?
4. What variables will you be able to play with for the waves? I'm assuming wave height and frequency, but given the quality of your other work, I'nm assuming much more.
5. Will it be able to look like open ocean well?
6. What impacts will it have on performance?

I will now sacrifice goats in the hope that it will make you publish this sooner.

 

Hi kofthefens,

Ha! I just push all these buttons on my keyboard in random patterns until...... ...but in answer to your questions...

1) Wakes... I have yet to explore 3D wake effects. The current ripple effects have been tweaked a bit and, as you said, can be made to look like wakes when using a high frequency. I would like to look further into this once all the final systems are in place.

2) Unity Free will also have the 3d waves... however there are some updated effects which will not be available because of limitations in the free version. Much of the new underwater effects rely on depth-rendering and render to texture, and because of this Unity Free effects will suffer (as is to be expected )

3) The new 3D wave generation is completely different technique than what is in the current version. It's generated dynamically based on your scene and water position, so there is no need to create your own wavemaps for this. Adjustments can be made on the fly while the scene is playing, yes.

4) Wave variables... I don't know if I want to list all these quite yet. certainly height, speed, direction, frequency, and choppiness... I'm currently going through a "reduction" process. I'd like to make things as simple as possible but still provide a large amount of customization.

5) Open Ocean... yes definitely.

6) This will depend... currently I have two different performance calculations, one for the visual quality of 3D waves and a second for the physics resolution of the 3d waves. While the visuals run very quickly, the physics generation tends to get bogged down at higher thresholds. I'm looking into auto-LODing techniques currently to improve on this.

 

This water makes me want to buy Unity Pro. Seriously, your water is about 50% why I would buy Unity Pro. (I'm a student, so it may take a little while to be able to afford it). Another two questions:

1. Will you have an option to prevent water from appearing in the bottom of boats? I know that in the current version, you can use depth mask and render queues, but if you are having 3d waves, I think that it could be easily integrated with the SUIMONO system automatically.
2. How are you doing buoyancy in the new version? I didn't like how it looked much in the current version, so I created my own script. How will it be improved?

 

Thanks for the feedback kofthefens. It's great to hear your excitement!

Water in boats is a serious issue. As you mentioned this is somewhat alleviated with 3d waves... as the same calculation function that determines the height of the wave can also be used to determine that height when it intersects a boat object... so this is a partial solution already, however mesh resolution is an issue. If the water mesh is set at a high res, then things will work just fine, but at low res the effect looks strange. Again, I'm looking at LOD techniques which might fix this a bit, but additional techniques may be required as well... such as render ordering/masking.

buoyancy... the new version uses a different system. While it is still relatively simple to operate, like the current system, the main difference is that instead of buoyancy affecting an object directly... buoyancy is applied by using "buoyant objects" attached to that object instead, which apply force directionally based on their relative position. The main advantage of this is you can apply MULTIPLE buoyant objects to a single gameobject which, in the case of a boat for example, can provide much more realistic water interactions than the current system, especially in relation to 3D dynamic waves.

Using the boat as an example you could set a number of objects around the sides, front, and back and tweak their forces in ways to provide more reactive force at the front of a boat then say the back or sides. Or you could edit these if the boat gets damaged to provide a realistic "listing effect" or even slowly sinking action.

Suimono 2.0 will include an extensive example scene that shows different types of water and interaction... and this does actually include a boat object to illustrate these buoyancy and clipping functions.

 

Is there a screenshot of open ocean available? I am excited to see it.