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  • Published 8 Jan 2021

Water Shader

Title says it all really. I know you can make your own with depth color, shallow color etc. Translate it from other node-based software etc but I think having a water shader for the ocean and so on already set up like principle etc could really be useful.

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Development Status: Open

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crop.circles.studio
8 Jan 2021

10 Comments

lsscpp

or a more generic 'Principled Refractive BSDF' that takes into account water/liquids, glass and maybe "architectural glasses"

1
Lateasusual

* @ Lsscpp * The existing Principled BSDF already does all that.

simonstoschu

* @Lateasusual * No it really doesn't. You can't do more than basic unperformant glass with the Principled BSDF only. Not really usable for Windows for example. The upcoming Asset Manager could offer some basic Material Setups like this out of the box.

crop.circles.studio Author

* @ Lsscpp * Ocean or water gets darker the deeper it gets, also changing colors and opacity (especially when it is close to an object) as well. Then we also have different types of water calm, rapid, etc. With many types of ripples with different sizes timing etc. In some cases, we have a shimmer effect as well. Then we also have foam. There is a lot that goes into this that I am unsure entirely if it can be achieved with what we have. I may poke at it later and see how achievable it is. Still, we have shaders for a lot of things but not water but we have an ocean modifier kinda seems we are missing an obvious piece to this puzzle.

1
BlenderSplendor

* @ Lsscpp * Architectural glass shaders in Cycles are a nightmare. It's so noisy & dark. Maybe I just suck though. XD

1
crop.circles.studio Author

* @BlenderSplendor * You have to up the samples. If it is dark check the color and so on. Most people when working with glass use two or three nodes. Glossy, Glass, and even sometimes Transparent to add just a touch more to it. It is a matter of how you blend it.

1
crop.circles.studio Author

* @Simon Storl-Schulke * They got rid of the asset browser for 2.92 dunno about it coming to 2.93. That was the only feature I cared about lol.

3rton

* @BlenderSplendor * Nah glass in Cycles is just not that good unless you do shader magic to fake it.

3rton

I think this is mostly covered with Principled Surface BSDF and Volume BSDF? As for the foam and waves etc I don't think it makes much sense to bake that into a shader (although there are people who've made procedural shader ocean add-ons) at least not an inbuilt one. If you are just looking for a quick way to create that though I guess Principled Surface+Volume and Ocean Modifier. If you want to go really complicated replace the Ocean modifier with Mantaflow (Or varius add-ons for fluid simulation)

crop.circles.studio Author

* @3rton93 * I think it would be possible to use some geometry node to figure out where the foam and such goes. I am no magician in Blender with this stuff but I know you can make some great stuff using nodes. I made it in UE4 myself and know most of what I said can be done with shaders the foam and ripples could be a little troublesome admittedly. Still, the rest is not able to be done with glass. The clearer near the shore, the darker the deeper it gets, etc. I tried converting UE4 shaders to Blender but it was a failure. Because as you know Blender does not have the same nodes. Which in some cases is very limiting.