Stylized Water 2
2.Compatibility
Unity
Version
Non-LTS versions are not supported, for example Unity 2022.1.
Unity version | URP Version | Status |
2019.4 | 7.x.x | Deprecated |
2020.3 | 10.x.x | Deprecated |
2021.1 | 9.x.x | Obsolete |
2021.2 | 12.x.x | Obsolete |
2021.3.16+ | 12.x.x | Supported |
2022.1 | 13.x.x | Obsolete |
2022.3.36+ | 14.0.7 | Supported |
2023.1.7+ | 15.0.8 | Obsolete |
2023.2 | 16.0.0 | Supported |
Unity 6 | 17.0.0 | Unsupported |
Unity 6+ will be supported in Stylized Water 3, available through a paid upgrade. Please see the Roadmap page to check what this will support, and therefor what this version (1.6) will not.
On Discord previews are shown throughout the development cycle.
Support for Render Graph requires to literally rewrite entire scripts, whilst also keeping the non-RG functionality in tact (in effect doubling maintenance overhead). These sort of forced large refactors have been a recurring trend since 2018, when Unity first introduced the Scriptable Render Pipeline. As of 2024 I’ve adopted a standard of segregating these reworks into separate assets, so that the labor involved is fairly compensated.
- Updates/fixes for Unity 2020 LTS have been discontinued as of version 1.5.0.
- Updates/fixes for Unity 2019 LTS have been discontinued as of version 1.1.8.
Scriptable Render Pipeline
Pipeline | Compatible |
Built-in (Legacy) | ❌ |
Universal (URP) | ✅ |
High-Definition (HDRP) | ❌ |
Only compatible with the Universal Render Pipeline. Support for other render pipelines unfortunately cannot simply be added, since this practically requires a complete rewrite of scripts and shaders, resulting in a new asset altogether.
This takes time to manually reverse engineer. Sometimes pre-emptive fixes are made for beta/alpha versions, but these may break in earlier or later alpha versions.
URP
- Materials that use Tessellation while URP’s “GPU Resident Drawer” is enabled will not render correctly. Instead the geometry appears to behave as a giant quad.
- When using Forward+ rendering, lights don’t appear to affect the water anymore after a certain distance.
Platforms
Compatibility with platforms is mostly dictated by what Unity and URP supports on said platforms.
Name | Compatible |
Windows | ✅ |
macOS | ✅ |
WebGL 1.0 | ❌ |
WebGL 2.0 | ✅ |
Android | ✅ |
iOS | ✅ |
Apple Vision Pro | ❌ |
WebGL does not support compute shaders or texture arrays. Though, at the time, this asset does not contain any functionality reliant on them. Stylized Water 3 does not support WebGL anymore, neither will Unity (see WebGPU).
Hardware | Compatible |
Oculus Quest | ✅ |
Desktop VR | ✅ |
tvOS | ⚠️ |
Google TV | ⚠️ |
The Multi-pass, Multiview and Single Pass Instanced rendering techniques are all supported and work the same across all VR plugins. As a means of performance optimization, orthographic camera’s are not supported when VR is in use.
Graphics API | Compatible |
OpenGLES 2.0 | ❌ |
OpenGLES 3.0+ | ✅ |
Vulkan | ✅ |
Metal | ✅ |
Devices released after 2012 support OpenGLES 3.0. Or typically an iPhone 6s or newer.
Oculus Desktop VR
Tested using an Oculus Rift S with the Oculus XR plugin. The Multi-pass, Multiview and Single Pass Instanced rendering techniques are all supported and work the same across all VR plugins. As a means of optimization, orthographic camera’s are not supported when VR is in use.
- The “Shared depth buffer” option must be disabled in the Oculus XR settings, otherwise the water effects appear to lag behind the headset movement.
- Planar reflections are not supported, reflection probes and screen-space reflections work as expected.
Meta Quest 2/3
Tested using an Oculus Quest 3 with the Oculus XR plugin.
- Multiview rendering must be used, otherwise the water effects appear to lag behind the headset movement (issue with how the depth texture is rendered).
- Using the Vulkan rendering API is highly recommended.
- Planar reflections are not supported, reflection probes and screen-space reflections work as expected.
As a rule of thumb: If a simple transparent plane works in your project, the water will also render correctly.
- Any reference to mobile platforms in the documentation also applies to Quest.
- Planar reflections are not supported, reflection probes and screen-space reflections work as expected.
Apple Vision Pro
The Unity documentation states:
ShaderLab and other custom coded shaders are not supported, as RealityKit for visionOS doesn’t expose a low-level shading language.
Therefor the water shader is also not supported on this platform.
WebGL
WebGL 2.0 is compatible since it uses the OpenGL 3.0 rendering API just like Android/iOS does. WebGL 1.0 is not compatible and should be removed as a Graphics API in the Player settings.
MacOS
Compatible with both OpenGL 4.1 and Metal.
In Unity 2022.3.15-35 a critical shader error will be present, hence this version range is incompatible due to a Unity bug.
tvOS remains untested, though it also uses the Metal graphics API, so there’s a slim chance this will pose any specific issues.
Mobile
Android uses either the OpenGL 3.0+ or Vulkan graphics API, whilst iOS uses Metal. So these are both inherently supported.
The shader is generally optimized, and uses a few principles that also aid performance sensitive hardware. Depending on the device and complexity of the project, it will depend if every feature on the shader can be enabled whilst maintaining proper framerates. See the Performance Guidelines page for more details. Expecting desktop-level graphics on mobile is unfortunately not realistic.
- The water will not turn pixelated the longer the application runs, as is the case with other water shaders. Though this may slowly start to occur after ~6+ hours due to the limited precision of mobile hardware.
- Google TV is not supported, given that URP graphics don’t fully work on the platform to begin with.
Consoles
No graphical or platform-specific issues were encountered.
Platform | Compatible |
Playstation 5 | ✅ Verified by users |
Xbox Series X | ✅ Tested with UWP build |
Nintendo Switch | ✅ Tested with EDEV hardware |
Playstation 4 | ✅ Tested via external party |
Xbox One X | ✅ Tested with UWP build |
Shader runs without any issues on Nintendo Switch. With all features enabled, the shader does not incur a noticeable performance hit (also in handheld mode). Though this may vary per project. Any references to mobile devices in the documentation should also apply to it.
Other assets
Fog post processing effects
See this page for a list of compatible assets.
Typically, any third-party fog/volumetric lighting solutions will ignore the water. Or shade the water surface with fog, based on what’s behind it (barely noticeable for shallow water). This behavior applies to all transparent materials, since they do not write to the depth texture these effects rely on.
Asset name | Compatible |
---|---|
Azure* | ✅ |
Atmospheric Height Fog v3.2.0+ | ✅ |
Buto | ✅ |
Enviro 2* | ✅ |
Enviro 3* | ✅ |
Cozy 1 | ✅ |
Cozy 2 | ✅ |
Cozy 3 | ✅ |
SC Post Effects | ✅ |
UniStorm | ❌ |
Weather Maker | ❌ |
Massive Clouds | ❌ |
Altos | ❌ |
* Does not support rendering its fog into a Planar Reflections render due to the use of custom projection matrices.
If an asset is not listed here, please get in touch so that I can investigate if an integration is possible.
Some assets have a closed code structure for fog shading, as opposed to exposing a re-usable code function for applying fog to a surface. In C# terms, this is comparable to not having a public and abstract API. Thus these asset can’t be integrated into any other shader, unless refactored by the author.
Use cases
Camera’s
Type | Compatible |
Perspective | ✅ |
Orthographic | ✅ |
Overlay | ❌ |
- Rendering the water on an Overlay camera is not possible, due to limitations imposed by URP’s camera stacking system.
- Geometry draw on overlay cameras are virtually invisible to the water. As such, depth-based effects (fog, caustics, refraction, SSR) will not render properly.
- Overlay geometry will cause artifacts when refraction is enabled on the water material, since they’re rendered after the water. A setup using the Render Objects feature otherwise works perfectly.
Features
Tessellation
May not appear to have any effect when using an incompatible graphics API or GPU (not supporting Shader Model 4.6+). In this case it is automatically disabled, so it can be enabled without worrying about a pink material on some devices.
Tessellation cannot work with waves if GPU Instancing is enabled on the water material, due to a limitation of Unity’s rendering architecture.