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kripto289, the creator of the module-based KWS Water System for Unity, recently shared a series of posts highlighting the upcoming features of KWS2, a new version of the tool, demonstrating some impressive simulations and shaders.
For instance, with moving objects in the water, you can bake a pre-simulation to eliminate wait times, such as when filling the riverbed. This allows the river to appear immediately at startup. However, the system still supports full dynamic simulation, reacting to all dynamic objects. That said, you'll still need to bake or calculate the ground level at the start to determine where the water could potentially flow.
The developer mentioned that they plan to release KWS2 before summer, and those who own the original KWS will receive a discount. kripto289 also shared that it's based on a shallow/height field water equation and provided a few resources for those interested in learning more:
Stay tuned and follow kripto289 on Reddit to keep up with the latest news on KWS2. In the meantime, you can try out the current version, available for URP, HDRP, and standard rendering.
Key features include:
- GPU wave simulation with multiple cascades to prevent tiling
- Physical lighting approximation, including volumetric lights and shadows, absorption, subsurface scattering, caustics, sunshafts, PBR shading, and sun reflections
- Reflection approximation using a reflection stack featuring fast screen-space projected reflections (several times faster than traditional SSR methods), camera planar reflections, and skybox reflections
- Physical refraction approximation in screen space with dispersion (using water IOR)
- Caustics based on water waves and dispersion
- Underwater effects, including partial submersion, sunshafts/volumetric lighting, caustics, and Snell's window effect
- Underwater rendering with internal SSR reflection and volumetric lighting
- Underwater bubbles and lit particles, with an efficient system allowing infinite tiling using just a few thousand particles
- Aquarium mode for realistic underwater environments
- Decal system with ShaderGraph, supporting duckweed and blood effects
- Trails using ShaderGraph and the particle system, including foam trail effects
- Intersection and open ocean foam rendering
- Shoreline foam waves with pre-baked particle simulations
- Flow rendering using flow maps, along with an integrated flow map painter
- Fluid simulation for static objects (e.g., rivers) with foam rendering
- River system using splines for dynamic water flow
- Buoyancy system with an API for customization
- Dynamic ripples using primitives or mesh renderers
- Rain effects for added realism
- Various mesh types, including infinite ocean mesh, finite box meshes (pools), spline rivers, and custom meshes
- Optimized rendering for multiple water instances
- LOD system with dynamic mesh quality and culling via QuadTree
- Tessellation for detailed water surface rendering
- Depth buffer writing for accurate post-effects like depth of field or third-party fogs/plugins
- In-editor video and text descriptions of each setting
- Built-in fog compatibility with one-click integration for third-party assets such as Enviro, Enviro3, Azure, Atmospheric Height Fog, and COZY Weather
- VR support for PC target platforms
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