Udemy
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
Turn what you know into an opportunity and reach millions around the world.
Learn More
Your cart is empty.
Keep shopping
Unreal Shader : River & Lake
Rating: 4.5 out of 5(19 ratings)
147 students

Unreal Shader : River & Lake

Learn how to create a dedicated water & river shader for UE5
Created byMichael Gerard
Last updated 1/2024
English

What you'll learn

  • Create serval material functions
  • Create an optimized shader
  • Deep Water Logic (deep & shallow color)
  • Movable Caustics and Foam
  • Dynamic Ripples
  • Debris & Ice layers (vertex painting)
  • River Logic

Course content

1 section12 lectures5h 9m total length
  • Explanations, Resources & How Work Material Functions11:48
  • Waves Function22:30
  • Setup Deep Color Feature20:01
  • Setup Other Attributes & Distant Based Normal Intensity18:33
  • Overall & Edge Opacity10:32
  • Edge Refraction11:07

    Learn edge refraction in Unreal shader for river and lake by tuning refraction intensity and depth, using the normal texture to reduce artifacts.

  • Caustics Feature22:42
  • Foam Feature28:30

    designs a foam feature for unreal shader river & lake using distance field edges, with texture size, speed, radius, color, and a foam mask for variation.

  • Ripples Feature48:33
  • Vertex Paint - Debris Layer1:00:42
  • Vertex Paint - Ice Layer44:20
  • River Feature10:00

Requirements

  • Owning a computer with Windows 10 (64Bits) / Not tested on Windows 11 or Mac
  • Winrar or 7zip to decompress files
  • Unreal Engine 5 Basics (Camera movements, create Materials, Import assets...)

Description

During this course I will show you, step by step, how to create a fully customizable water shader!


What I will learn?

We will start by creating the waves movements with the help of a native hidden function.

After this first feature, we will create the deep water logic to control independently shallow and deep water color

To control the normal, roughness or specular intensities, we will create a big function for the parameters

And we will take advantage of this part to implement a distance system to avoid the wave repetition at long distance.

Once we have taken control of our parameters, we will focus on opacity to create a smooth transition between the objects and the water edges.

And we will configure some very simple parameters for refraction

To increase the realism of our water, we wll see how to generate caustic and foam effects, fully customizable in color, texture size, intensity, fade distance and speed.

Because it can be useful in rainy environments, we'll look at how to integrate a ripple system.

As a bonus, you'll find in the course resources the Substance Designer file for creating and/or modifying a ripple texture.

To add detail to the water surface, painting meshes is always a good option, but it's sometimes difficult to simulate waves on them.

With a vertex layer, you can paint all kinds of details on the surface and control the waves influence.

Winter environments have always something special, that's is why we will integrate a vertex-controllable ice system. 

And finally, we will set up an option to convert our water point into a river


Important note :

This course was created in version 5.2 and it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to use THE SAME version! If you choose to use another version, be aware that you may encounter possible errors not covered in this course.


About copyrights:

All you can find in this course are for personal usage only. You cannot share it, sell it or make it available for free on any platform.

Who this course is for:

  • Anyone who wants to learn, improve or fix their skills in environment creation.