Unreal Shader : River & Lake

Name: Unreal Shader : River & Lake
Rating: 4.5 (20 reviews)

Learn how to create a dedicated water & river shader for UE5

Created byMichael Gerard

Last updated 1/2024

English

English [Auto],

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 section • 12 lectures • 5h 9m total length

Explanations, Resources & How Work Material Functions11:48
Waves Function22:30
Learn to create river and lake waves in Unreal Engine by moving a normal map with a panner, using world position and motion chaos to drive movement.
Setup Deep Color Feature20:01
Build a deep color shader by creating a water color material function (MF water color) that blends surface and deep colors with a depth-driven gradient.
Setup Other Attributes & Distant Based Normal Intensity18:33
Explore setting up advanced material attributes for unreal shader river and lake, including distant based normal intensity, vector parameters, and distance fade logic.
Overall & Edge Opacity10:32
Learn to create water edge opacity in Unreal shaders by using custom depth, camera relative position, and a depth fade with an opacity parameter and edge fade distance.
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
Learn to implement caustics in a water shader by creating a shared texture function, configuring texture size, normal map, panner movement, and a static switch with depth fade and intensity.
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
Design and implement ripple effects in Unreal shaders, including randomized visibility, time-based weight, UV tiling, and combining channels to create animated river and lake ripples.
Vertex Paint - Debris Layer1:00:42
learn how to implement a vertex-driven debris layer in Unreal shader for river and lake scenes, preserving wave motion while controlling albedo, opacity, tiling, and ambient occlusion through vertex color.
Vertex Paint - Ice Layer44:20
Master an Unreal Engine water shader by building a master function with water and ice UVs, and implement vertex painting to drive base color, specular, roughness, and opacity.
River Feature10:00
Build the MBF river logic in Unreal shader to drive river movement using texture size, pan, and river speed x and y, controlled by a static river switch and caustics.

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.