SUIMONO Water System - 2.0 BETA Announcement

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EDIT! Suimono Version 2.0 is now released!
Check out the official thread here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/suimono-2-0-interactive-water-system.289311/

The beta described below has now been closed. All customers who've purchased Suimono version 1.4x or below are also eligible to download the new 2.0 updates on the asset store.
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After many months of work, I'm happy to finally announce that BETA access Suimono 2.0 is now officially open closed!

The BETA is open to all current customers of Suimono. Those who've purchased off the Tanuki Digital website can download now using their Suimono license key. Those who've purchased off the Asset Store can still get access by sending their name, email and Asset Store purchase number as detailed at the below link.

Anyone who hasn't yet purchased the current version can still do so and gain access to the BETA as well. The beta, and the final 2.0 version will be a free upgrade to all Suimono customers.

Go get it NOW: http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/beta

UPDATE: 12/7/2014 - 2.0 Beta Version 0.90 released
Take a look at the latest release notes here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/su...beta-announcement.211653/page-11#post-1877446

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Suimono is the premiere water system for Unity.
Create beautiful, dynamic, interactive, and completely customizable bodies of water in your Unity based projects


What's New?
3D Waves and DX11 Tessellation
Version 2.0 brings dynamically generated 3D waves to Unity. Waves are generated based on surrounding geometry, and those with DX11 and Unity 4.0+ get access to full distance based wave tessellation.

Automatic Shoreline and Flowmap Creation
Suimono water surfaces automatically detect scene objects and generate shoreline and flowmap s accordingly, giving you an integrated water surface with no extra work on the user-end.

Improved Surface Rendering
New depth based light scattering and specular, as well as advanced foam and reflection controls.

Improved Underwater Effects
Many aspects of the underwater visuals have been improved, including fogging, under-surface reflections, and depth-blur effects.

Advanced Buoyancy system
Customize buoyancy forces across your game objects with custom force placement.

Updated UI and Automatic Presets
Suimono now uses a custom Editor GUI and a completely rewritten and automated preset system. Now you can save and copy your presets or make new ones at the press of a button.

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Why the Beta?
There are various aspects of suimono that can be developed in-house, but to make this the best water system available for Unity it's important to get user feedback about both features, useability, and performance. As such, some features of Suimono are still a work-in-progress and will be improved over the course of the Beta period. Below is a list of current issues and improvements that are planned to be finished before final release.

- Full Documentation (in progress)
- more flexibility in wave generation and custom mesh support
- more accurate 'GetHeight' function
- Underwater depth and Transparency issues under DX11
- complete set of custom presets
- Buoyancy improvements
- Addition of Vertex based foam and boat wake effects
- Underwater improvements and performance enhancements (especially on mobile)
- Complete demo scene mini-game, showing all Suimono features. (in progress)

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Documentation
The 2.0 Documentation is in the process of being written as we make changes, tweak, and add any additional features. You can always view the most up to date BETA documentation by using the link below. We'll be updating this document regularly over the course of the BETA.

PDF Download Link: http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/documentation/

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Thank You!
And finally I'd just like to say "thank you", to everyone who's purchase Suimono, asked a question, or otherwise shown interest in this project. It's been a great ride being on the Asset Store, and I hope to continue and grow with it into the future! And yeah, make the best damn water possible!

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I like the caustics, shorelines and foam .

But I don't understand what's interactive about it.

 

Well true, the interactivity doesn't show much in this work-in-progress video. You can see the interactivity in the current version, as well as play a webplayer demo at this thread here:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/147111-SUIMONO-Customizeable-Water-System-RELEASED

 

Time to root around in my email it seems

 

Hi All, just an update to let you know there's a new BETA version ready for download...

UPDATE: 11/19/2013 - 2.0 Beta Version 02 released

• - CHANGE - Separated SuimonoObject component and mesh/rendering object for performance reasons. Surface render is now a child of surface object.
• - FIX - Automatic Shader switching depending in Unity version and Target Platform.
• - FIX - general Implicit errors in some preset return functions.
• - FIX - Unity 4.3 loading wrong UI in Android mode.

 

congrats!

 

thanks im!

 

ChIngwa i have try your new system and i have question is possible to get from you a package with the script with how to add a image to editor script? like your? example into your script have added a image and i canot find where is please can you give me it with only that code???

 

First you need an editor script, the code is this:

Code (csharp):

1. var logo = Resources.Load("logo",Texture);
2. EditorGUILayout.LabelField(GUIContent(logo),GUILayout.Width(120),GUILayout.Height(40));
3.  

 

@mihai - I sent you a PM.

 

I added a link to the preliminary documentation PDF. This is still in progress, but it gives a description and rundown of the general system as well as the main components on the Module and Surface objects. Take a look here, we'll be updating this document constantly over the course of the BETA...

PDF Documentation Link: http://tanukidigital.com/suimono/beta/suimono2_documentation.pdf

 

Hi All, there's a new BETA version ready for download...

UPDATE: 11/25/2013 - 2.0 Beta Version 03 released

• NEW - Improved underwater depth and fog shading. Now includes directional-lit fog and edge falloff controls, for a more immersive underwater environment.
• NEW - Added Refraction Speed and Refraction Scale attributes to the Underwater Refraction Controls.
• NEW - Improved underwater rendering for Android and iOS. Uses full fog and reflection renderer.
• CHANGE - Consolidating vertex shader code into new SuimonoFunctions.cginc library.
• CHANGE - Added new "Performance Settings" options to the Suimono Module Object.
• CHANGE - Dynamic Reflections now work on mobile by default. There is a new option to disable Dynamic reflections in the performance settings.
• FIX - Dynamic Reflection texture link to main shader was broken. Now the reflection Object successfully feeds the generated texture to the Surface Shader.
• FIX - Blurring now functions correctly on surface object and underwater.

 

Hi Chingwa

Are you able to show it in a small movie ?

thanks

Norbert

 

Hi norby,

Below is a video showing off the changes to the underwater fog system in the latest beta. It now includes scene-lit volumetric fog and edge falloff controls... Enjoy
[video=youtube_share;6VVMxshFSFg]http://youtu.be/6VVMxshFSFg

 

Great!
Seriously considering to buy this one.

 

That's looking really good! i'm still obsessed with the idea of plugging a projected grid for the water surface and stuff i dont entirely understand with fft for a more procedural effect for the waves (either the typical deep ocean look or smaller more choppy features using the phillips spectrum, but thats not eactly saying your waves are bad, they more like just the infuence or subjective opinion. I do find it fin messing with it all great fun

 

nipoco - thanks! I will make you a believer... if not now, then soon.

lazygunn - Yeah people start losing me when they talk about ffts and projected grids... my brain can't hack it. But I'm glad you're enjoying the beta so far. I hope to have some new wave generation soon as well.

 

Suimono 2.0 is already one of the best water shaders for Unity I've seen so far. If not the best.

Some stuff I still would like to see is chromatic aberration and underwater light scattering.

Is the caustics projection based on the water surface normals? Not that this is super important right now. But it would be nice to have

Keep up the great work!

 

Thanks for the feedback nipoco!

Chromatic Abberation - I didn't even consider this... it would be pretty easy to implement though as there's already a blurring function (though I don't go into it in the video above). I assume you mean chromatic abberation while underwater, similar to Unity's vignette camera effect?

Underwater Light Scattering... sounds cool, do you mean like a light ray effect? can you elaborate or point me toward a picture?

The caustic projection is not currently based on surface normals, no. It isn't a true light refracting effect either as that would simply be too processor intensive. I had experimented with tilting the projection based on the light direction, though it starts to get's strange at certain angles so I've locked it basically into a 90degree rotation, at least for now. It seems to be a good workaround though between the projector based system that's being used in the current version of Suimono and a real light/normals calculation.

 

Thanks for your reply!

No worries about the caustics. I think your solution works pretty great as far as I can judge that from the video.

As for the light scattering. Yes I mean such light ray effects. Not sure how much of an performance hit this would be.

I can refer to these two videos made by Martin Uptis. He's working on a water shader for Blender's game engine. And if you look into the first video description you can even find a link to the .blend file. He made the code available (it's written in Python tho) But maybe it gives you an idea.
It also shows the chromatic aberration effect combined with the refraction if you look onto the water surface.

[video=youtube_share;UkskiSza4p0]http://youtu.be/UkskiSza4p0

[video=youtube_share;nv89chmj6b4]http://youtu.be/nv89chmj6b4

 

THAT is some lovely water. Thanks for the videos... that's definitely giving me some ideas.

 

Great to hear. Can't wait to see how SUIMONO 2.0 progresses

 

I wouldn't worry, i start getting pretty lost too! Especially as at the moment, just for an exercise in challenging scene creation im going to try mix my fave unity stuff into one scene, and hopefully it all play well enough together if i try to make its shading physically correct.This includes taking suimono and hopefully being able to alter it to my means. Dont worry if i dont fail and i do get some tolerable results, you'll be the first to get the water based stuff It'll take god knows how long. Wish me luck

 

Hi All, there's a new BETA version ready for download...

This is just a maintenance release as a number of people reported some import errors. I'm still working on improved wave rendering and should have that in the next release, I just wanted to get this out asap for those who were having problems. There's also some minor code changes that should increase performance a little bit. Finally, starting with this release you can now choose to download in either zip, or rar format as best suits your platform.

Download Here: http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/beta

UPDATE: 12/6/2013 - 2.0 Beta Version 04 released

• FIX - Returned surface mesh object to .fbx format (was mistakenly set as .max, causing errors on import.)
• FIX - FX Offset setting now correctly offsets underwater effects plane as expected.
• CHANGE - small performance updates to general codebase.
• NEW - added caustic object define to the Suimono_Module performance tab.

 

this looks like it would be nice to use for the ripples effect http://www.cemyuksel.com/research/waveparticles/

 

Thanks bluevy, that's a pretty interesting technique. There's actually a ton of interesting stuff at that website...

 

I have to say Chingwa, that's some great looking water. I'll be buying it from the store tomorrow to use in game. Interesting that someone pointed you to Martin's work on blender. I've had some very long conversations with him and his effect and it's great to see his water improving. The only downside is that Blender is not as accessible as Unity, otherwise I would have absolutely continued using his superb shader for the water.

The problem making the switch of game engine was that Unity still had a lot to do to catch up with the water. Would love to get you involved in our project at some point as well as putting you in touch with Martin. As far as I am concerned, you both have the best water shaders on your respective engines (looking at your video of course, yet to play with it!).

Looking forward to working on it tomorrow, fantastic stuff again!

 

Hi Konka,

Thanks a lot for your kind words, it's always great to get feedback like this and to see how excited other people are for it. Please note that this is still in beta and there is certainly still some room for improvement in visuals, performance, and workflow. I'd love to be able to bring it to the same level as Martins water, he has some very nice fx going on in those videos. Let me know your first impressions and if you run into any issues, and of course any suggestions you may have. Thanks!

 

I'm gonna click on that link soon, but hey, good to see an update, hopefully tesselations back now! And yeah the max format i found really odd, was going to ask you about it. I'm going to consider this update motivation to get off the sofa haha. One thing I have to say and this actually goes back to the first suimono, is how long the shaders take to import, particularly the underwater ones, its probably unavoidable but if there's any way to speed it up, especially when i'm often reimporting over and over, that would be hugely appreciated. Hope you found the zip informative and wotnot, i know the fft stuff is pretty confounding! Although I can warrant you can follow it better than I can. If you get chance let me know your thoughts on here or PM i suppose and I was interested in what the outcome has been from other stuff as well! Particularly because Big Ideas are afoot and it seems your work is going to be in it, not that it implies what I make will be successful (hah), but your stuff has already been an incredibly helpful part of the process and will continue to be

 

That guy's shader is lovely! I've been kinda.. messing around with water, chingwa's been extremely helpful and friendly, so he's probably the man to talk to!

 

I'm having the same problem with 3D water as the last beta and i cannot understand what's going on, and i'm not sure if it's Suimono or something else. The first beta i figured out, have the wave generator update, had it at 30 fps or so to be very smooth, obviously dx11 on, max the water depth, have the flow speed high and it was looking pretty good and a basis to work with, the surface was smooth and then i was looking at wave formation. Since the 2nd beta it's been odd, do the same process, the ocean still seems to not change much from a non-tesselated version, particularly easy to see with the crest rising underneath the start in the demo, its rather angular, except changing the tesselation settings does seem to be changing something in the view, although it's not clear what, it's like something's happening middle distance. This happens on all presets. And changing the wave gen fps makes no difference.

The odd thing is i went back to the first beta and it did the same there. So i reinstalled unity and still the same. Driving me a bit mad, no idea what's going on with it, and cause the first beta was fine, its annoying cause i want to get on with doing some productive messing around with it. It may well be something really silly im overlooking, and given it seems to be a system thing cause of beta 1 doing it, this is likely the case, but i have no what it is. I suppose i'll just keep looking for some kind of answer when i next get up.

Going back to to the first beta though, when it was all hunky dory, something i forgot to say was, i found the height setting a bit restrictive, as the max wave height was relatively small

I suppose while i look for an answer to the tesselation thing, i'll keep the hybrid thingy i was doing updated, although i guess thats not really the main goal for the week. For something entirely different i was going to finally face up to it and get a grounding in translating shaders between glsl and Cg, with this in mind I wander if Martin, the fellow who wrote that rather lovely shader for the blender engine would mind me having a look as i'm guessing it's in glsl, going by his blog. Personal use only of course in this case but integrated into the hybrid thing already implementing suimono and scrawk's whitecap shader's finest moments. I guess the experience might prove useful if the above proposal to get you folk talking bears fruit (Martin's blog mention's possibly porting the shader to Unity so i'd very likely use his port when it transpired rather than rely on my attempt)

 

I've sent you a PM, Chingwa

 

lazygunn - OK, I just went back and did a direct comparison and... It isn't just you! There is definitely something going on with the current tessellation compared to beta1... there just isn't the same wave fidelity. Thanks for the heads-up, and sorry for frustration. as they say... "it's not you, it's me" I'll look into this right away.

 

Hi All, there's a new BETA version ready for download...

This is a small but critical release. It fixes tessellation issues under DX11 that were preventing detailed wave formations, and locking the surface into low resolution, despite high tessellation values. This should now be fixed

Download Here: http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/beta

UPDATE: 12/10/2013 - 2.0 Beta Version 05 released

• FIX - tessellation resolution was inexplicably being set too low. This is now fixed and waves have proper definition.
• CHANGE - Updated underwater settings for included presets for better underwater coloring.

 

Hi All, there's a new BETA version ready for download...

There were a number of issues with the last beta release that have been fixed here, as well as some other nagging issues with the preset system.

One addition which you need to be aware of is a new setting on the SuimonoModule object called "Unity Target Version". You'll need to set this setting in your scene depending on your rendering target (dx11), or whether you are on Unity or Unity Pro. Otherwise you may see the surface go pink because it isn't using the correct shader. By default it is set to Unity Pro, so those using the free version of Unity or those using DX11, please be aware of this additional setup step.

Download Here: http://www.tanukidigital.com/suimono/beta

UPDATE: 12/11/2013 - 2.0 Beta Version 06 released

• NEW - 'Unity Target Version' setting added to SuimonoModule object. Manual selection required to explicitly define render states.
• FIX - Runtime string errors related to preset load parsing.
• FIX - Build export errors trying to access UnityEditor and PlayerSettings. Builds should now clear all error checks.
• FIX - Build Export versions not running preset update data correctly. Builds should now behave exactly like in-editor.
• FIX - Preset system errors preventing the proper saving/loading/renaming of presets.
• FIX - Error when deleting the last preset in the list, now fixed.
• CHANGE - Underwater fog setting slider no longer goes into the negative.

 

I can scale the Surface to make it larger correct? I mean, I know I CAN, but does it mess things up? Preliminary tests show it changes the wave speed, not sure what other negatives though?

 

Hey there, just started using the new 2.0 Beta, and I have to say it's looking pretty phenomenal. I just updated to the release #6 version of it that you uploaded a few minutes ago and I'm having a lot of trouble with the preset manager now. I'm not sure if it's the process/sequence of steps I'm using or a simple bug in the interface.

Essentially, I drop the module into the scene (centered at 0,0,0), drop a water surface in and line it up, then get to tweaking. I'll hit the play button, in order to see how everything is behaving, and periodically save presets by hitting the +NEW button. While in play mode I'm able to swap between the presets (both the originals and my custom ones) without any problem, but when I exit play mode the system reverts back to how it was prior to my tweaking, as I'd expect, but the presets are no longer visible in the list. If I hit the [ - ] button next to the originals and delete them my custom presets will scroll up into the available space in the field as room is made, but not all of them come through to that point. For instance, I just set up three presets, left play mode, and after deleting some of the originals was only presented with one of my saved custom presets left. Anyone else experiencing this, or am I perhaps going about working with the system in the wrong manner by editing everything in play mode and saving a preset? I also find that, after deleting any presets outside of play mode, I'm no longer able to create new presets and the list appears to be empty.

 

Wow, amazing work.. I was going to write my own but I don't think I need to..

You got a purchase .

 

OneShotGG - Sure you can scale the surface without any real performance impact. Currently there are a few settings that need tweaking along with the scale (yes, such as the flow speed), and there also is a resolution issue in the wave generation that I'm still working out. If you're not using DX11 though the waves really can only be scaled to a certain point before they start losing fidelity... maybe 50 meters square or so.

ShadowK - awesome, thank you!!

aKobitz - Well, you're right! I just checked and ran through the process as you describe and yeah it's not saving presets after exiting play mode. or rather, IT IS... they just aren't showing up in the list! and then other problems get caused when continuing from this state. Sorry 'bout that, I'll have to run through and do some more debugging. You're using it correctly though, it's (usually) much better to change settings and save presets while in play mode as the editor window doesn't supply correct depth mode which affects certain settings. I'll get this fixed ASAP.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, I will keep that in mind. I have another question.

I can get deep waves to look good but shorelines I am at a loss. I notice that you have a "creeping" wave that moves up the shore and then retreats back but this seems to only darken the terrain texture and is jarring with the foam being kinda static.

Is this a bug or has this feature not been fully implemented.

This is what I am talking about.

I can see the darkening your asset does to simulate this but there is no foam, specular or texture change so it looks like phantom water is causing the sand to darken.

I am using RTP3 if that matters.

 

I'm thinking that must definitely be to come, because that was pretty much in the first suimono, and i had that kind of thing working perfectly fine with rtp3 and its own darkening with the version of the water i made that consisted much of the first suimono's features. So i see that coming eventually i think! Looking forwards to it actually. Given you can use your own textures if you want (theres an option) some fine, animated noise generation could make for some lovely foam/edge foam

Something i had going with rtp3 that goes really well with this is using a mask with rtp3s water feature for darkening and dialing up rtps3's water flow feature, so you get a nice visual effet of water running back down slopes as the suimono ocean washes away off them

 

It's a bit in-between at the moment to be honest. There is a darkening pass which attempts to simulate the wet-sand look. The color of this can be changed or you can put the alpha down to 0 to remove it. check out the "Tide Color" in the WaterSurface tab.

I've been working on improving the 3D shore waves and I think everyone will be really happy with how they're turning out, it has more of the action you are talking about. I should have this implemented in a beta version really soon, but in the meantime you can affect the shoreline length somewhat by changing the "Shore Range" and "Wave Range" attributes on the Suimono_shorelineObject game object. also changing the "Shallow Wave Height" attribute on the 3D Wave Settings tab will affect this somewhat as well.

Stay tuned though, improvements are already in the works and are coming soon.

 

I'll give that a shot thanks!

Ok cool, I just was worried I was doing something wrong and/or there was another asset messing things up. I can't wait to see what you have coming next!

 

The betas are going well! The last few weeks i've been trying to figure out what I am using for what for my next thing, hopefully I can get some kind of proper coastal behaviour from hybrid ocean thing, but as open sea will be a very small part of the thing as a whole im not going to push too hard with it and i'm going to concentrate on using suimono 2 as my main answer for water and work within it, for inland bodies of water, and try keep the feedback up. I will still try looking into other methods of wave generation, although yours are looking much much nicer. The other wave generation options atm are scrawks phillips spectrum implementation (although it's a bit slow as an ideal) or the turbulence library which should be very fast, but involves another third party.. which I cant afford really as actual work is soon beginning and i need a few other things first on a tight budget

I suppose to this end im wondering if you're considering rivers using flowmaps, there are tools to create these maps and theres a scrawk blog entry detailing how to use these maps, the tool that can let you paint these maps is here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105399

There is a developer whose flowmapping creator is based on fluid dynamics but thats a little more costly. I think i'm going to ask thinkquirrel, the creator of fluvio his thoughts on this as it's quite his field

If you consider flowmaps for rivers is a good thing, that would be pretty great, and new proposed features to fluvio make it possibly a very good complementary product

Looking forwards to seeing what can be done! Again, as usual,if i made anything pretty with your asset, ill promote the hell out of the asset

You meantioned you wished suimono to have a variety of applications, and it will show in a lake, qute possibly a few lakes so it could end up very well represented. Might nag yu a bit though. If im saying anything remotely useless and you think its a good idea to discuss youre welcome to add on skype

 

Are there any plans to give us tessellated waves for OpenGL? I ask as DX11 is only windows compliant... I would like them to work on OS X and Linux builds as well.

Thank you,

Gary Haus

 

Unfortunately no, there aren't immediate plans to try to implement this for OpenGL. I think for that to happen the Mac OpenGL implementation would need to be updated, and of course Unity would also need to be updated and also have clear cut procedures and examples of how to take advantage of GL tessellation. Until that happens Suimono tessellation will remain in dx11 only.

Personally I'd love Mac to be able to take advantage, but well, it hasn't been a priority for them.

 

Chingwa,

Thanks for the reply. I think I am very confused... Doesn't Mac/Unity support OpenGL 3.2 or newer? I was under the impression OPenGL 3.x had the ability to have tessellation. If its not possible I understand... Just want to make sure I leave no stone unturned.

Kindest regards,

Gary

 

Well last time I checked, Apple still didn't have support for OpenGL 4.0 which is the true DX11 equivalent... I've seen examples of tessellation on Mac under OpenGL 3.2, but I think these were specific test cases and not standard. Perhaps Apple updated to 4.0 with Mavericks? In any case Unity does not supply a pipeline to access openGL tessellation even if it is supported on the latest iteration of Mac OS. But certainly once it is made available in Unity I'll be looking into supporting it.

 

Yes Mavericks brings OpenGL 4.1... Looks like its up to Unity now....

Gary

 

effect_refract_plane is too small, where are the controls for scaling?