Stylized Water Shader Documentation

Stylized Water Shader

Stylized Water Shader
Version: 2.1.6
Review

2.Compatibility #

Unity version
The minimum supported version is Unity 2019.4.

Beta and Alpha versions may work but will not be eligible for support, due to the frequent changes. Once a release version is available, the package will be retested, and an update may follow with any required changes or fixes.

Scriptable Render Pipeline
The Universal and High-Definition render pipelines (URP/HDRP) are not supported. Shaders need to be completely rewritten to work in another render pipeline.

For the URP, see Stylized Water 2, which you can currently get with a 30% update discount. This discount only becomes available if you own this asset already. So having both assets in your cart won’t apply the upgrade discount.

VR

Single Pass Instanced, Multipass & Multiview rendering are all supported. This covers any and all VR applications.

Planar reflections aren’t VR compatible, and are automatically disabled.

Oculus Quest/Gear VR

Compatible, though shadows need to be used in at least one scene that’s included in the build. Otherwise depth-writing functionality is stripped, which the water relies on.

Mobile
The minimum hardware requirement is a GPU compatible with OpenGL ES 3.0. Devices released after 2014 support this, or typically an iPhone 6s.

The shaders offer different lighting methods, the “Unlit” and “Simple” lighting methods are best suited for mobile.

MacOS
Compatible with both OpenGL and Metal.

On hardware without a dedicated graphics card (eg. Macbook Air), the water tends to render with checker-like artifacts. This has been identified as a bug in how Unity renders the depth texture, used by the water.

Fog
The water renders to the Transparency queue and does not contribute to the scene’s depth, as such it will not be affected by third-party fog effects. Unity’s standard fog works as expected.

Consoles
Users have reported to have no issues on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The shaders are “surface shaders”, which means they use Unity’s internal lighting system rather than a custom one. This leads to assume the chance of any graphical or compiling issues are minimal.

I do not have access to any PS4/Xbox dev kits. So if you find yourself having any such issues, please get in touch as I’d be happy to work towards a solution!

No issues found on Nintendo Switch, though the mobile shader should be used for this platform.

Lighting
With the lighting mode set to “Advanced” the shader supports Skybox reflections and Reflection Probes, as well as 3 point lights. Spot lights are not supported.

Reflections
Objects using shaders that render to the “Transparent” render queue cannot be reflected.

Misc

  • DirectX 9 is not supported, a minimum of Shader Model 3.5 is required. Any graphics card newer than a Radeon X1000 or GeForce 6 will support this.
  • Using cinemachine and a split-screen set up is not supported on some platforms, due to a bug that Cinemachine induces in regards to the depth texture.
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Last updated on March 7, 2023
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