Custom Water System for Prismatica [UE4 WIP 1]

Hello friends! My latest experimentations have thrown me down a rabbit hole of Water Shaders in Unreal Engine! I've had a tonne of fun playing with refraction, world position offset, creating procedural foam, procedural water deformation and vertex paint options. These shaders and materials were made from scratch without the UE4 4.26 water system as a base as I heard it was still quite buggy and had cause some of my friend's engines to crash at times. If the internal system becomes more stable I might merge my system in the future!
I'm yet to add full interaction with the water, but some features I'd like to doodle with are - accurate surface ripples from moving actors using Render Targets and Custom Depth, large splashes/deforms using Blueprint events that measure the velocity and print a reeeally big deformation to the RT, skimming algae off the surface as you walk through it, as well as character affectation like wading/swimming on the surface.
I'm having a TONNE of fun working on this - if you'd like to see progress in real time, join our Discord or join me on Twitch!
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Discord - / discord
Patreon - / prismaticadev
Twitch - / prismaticadev
Twitter - / prismaticadev
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Computer Specs:
Ryzen 3900x 12-core CPU
MSI Geforce RTX 2080 Super
64GB Corsair RAM
One of those fancy nvme m.2 SSD's
Programs of choice:
Unreal Engine 4 - (Game Dev)
Blender 2.8 - (Animation and Modelling)
OBS - (Video/screen capture)
Davinci Resolve - (Video editing)
Adobe Photoshop - (Graphics and Texturing)
Quixel Mixer - (Texturing)
ProTools 11 - (Compositions and mixing)
OldSchool Runescape - (Chillax time)
Filmed using:
Sony A7s2 body
Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens
Yonguo YN360 LED's for colour
Yongnuo YN760 chip LED w/ Godox softbox for key
My lovely cats names are Boycat, Girlcat and Ladycat :)

[@YourSandbox]

Speed of your growth is incredible. Not even all AAA artists can do this. Well done and keep doing what you’re doing

[@PrismaticaDev]

You're the best my man

[@LookItsCollin]

Visuals and audio are FAR better than any other indie project I see posted around atm. Some of these rivers already look so good I know I'd spend a few minutes just enjoying the view. I always tell my students that visuals come last but wow I'm glad you've chosen to focus on them. Genuinely amazing work as always

[@PrismaticaDev]

One of the biggest bonuses of working in a Dev Duo is that I can focus on all of the visuals early on, since visuals/art takes the most time in the dev cycle as far as I can tell. I also think as an unknown indie developer, the first priority should be starting to build an audience as soon as possible because growth is always exponential and the sooner you start turning eyeballs towards your project the better. So I think it's vital to get visuals to an acceptable quality/style early on :)

[@Fokkusu]

holy moly it looks amazing, I wish I could get on the livestream more often, watching all this come together is magical, I hope you get those 10k subs so we can see how the magic behind this is done :P, thanks a lot for all the contributions you do to the game developer community ^^

[@PrismaticaDev]

Thanks as always Alejandro :) I'm just doing what I love doing!

[@JhonatanosRJ]

Realy nice shader! Awaiting for tutorial or overview. I'm learning so much from your channel. Thank you a lot!

[@Fabio-zc7bs]

I Love how you make me feel excited for this. I mean, I'm in the way of perfecting my own stylized water shaders for now. It's being long and hard journey but I'm managing to do it little by little. There are a lot of things I would love to learn from you as always. At the moment I'm preparing my shader (organizing it into different Material Functions so it can be reused and make it more organized) to create this slope based foam inspired by Genshin Impact and now by you. The opacity vertex painting is also a thing for me now since I have to erase part of my Sea plane to be able to create a river and have no doubled water shaders (that would look weird, I guess). I'm in my journey to increase my knowledge in this matter and you inspire me so much, man. Thank you for being around. It's very important how "casually" you talk about the development of a game. You know when and how to be technical but you also talks normally about the topic and that's awesome.

[@CosmicComputer]

wow man, this is incredible as always, thanks for putting in the work and sharing the results with us!

[@CosmicComputer]

... also, I think we need a giant boss that comes up and emerges through the water somehow :P

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@CosmicComputer YES hahaha. Giant bosses are my favourite. Thanks for the kind words my friend :)

[@tiannicalogheros6339]

Wow! I would love to know how to do this. I recently got into using UE4 and I find it's just as invigorating/stimulating as many base building games, except I have all the artistic control. I love your tutorials so far and I am excited to see what else you show :) Thanks for teaching me a lot of new things, I'm excited to put them to practical use in my own dream game one day

[@PrismaticaDev]

I've always been a huge fan of city-builders and I agree - building a game world is so much fun! Excited to see what you come up with :)

[@BadPractices]

This project is an absolute masterpiece.

[@_Caose]

I think I am in love with this water system.

[@arkadymihailov4299]

Stunning and incredible!

[@felixmikolai7375]

Looking beautiful sir, I’m sure u get one of the big ones ;)

[@johannesmonsch2818]

Wow. After being upset by the shitty tutorials of the new water system you come with this! I really enjoy your videos and i told my studio to follow you. We need the 10k Suscribers, because this water system is nuts and you explain so well. I dont understand why your videos only have 3,5k suscribers. I see you making GDC talks or making articles for 80lvls in the future :) I hope you will never give up!

[@PrismaticaDev]

Thanks Johannes! I love to share all of my findings so I'd be making videos regardless haha. Hopefully my GDC talk isn't a "Why my game failed miserably" talk :P

[@emac5453]

Love it! Would love and appreciate a tutorial or rundown on how you made this or an explanation on how to create something similar. Amazing work as always, huge inspiration!

[@joshuaisraelalbao1877]

Wonderful content, as always!

[@PrismaticaDev]

Thanks Josh :) Happy that you enjoy it!

[@ZahhibbDev]

It's insane how good you are at his dude, so fun to see both you and the game grow! If you don't mind me asking, but what have you done/worked on previously before starting on your indie game? It just seems you have such good grasp in math, shaders, and basicly the entire tech art pipeline.

[@PrismaticaDev]

Hey hey Zahhibb! Before starting with Game development I was a professional musician and audio engineer, so there isn't really any direct synergy aside from general problem-solving skills. I did General maths in school instead of Methods because I was a lazy student haha. Although I did have some experience in photoshop creating promotional material so I guess some of that carries over to tech art :) I think the 3 most important factors to learning any new skills are passion, efficiency and time. With even 1 of these things missing then progress will be slowed significantly. Passion and interest are the first steps towards developing a skill, efficient and constant learning and puzzle solving are where we actually learn new things and then time is just doing it over and over again and not worrying that you aren't at a certain point already - just trust in the process and know that eventually you'll get where you need to be :)

[@ZahhibbDev]

@@PrismaticaDev Haha yeah this sound just about what I was thinking, I guess there are no shortcuts and sometimes you got to struggle a bit to reach a certain point. Thanks for answering, and all your devlogs/tutorials has been great so far! Your passion for development have kind of energized me to start working on my own stuff now (though with a routine this time instead of only passion), so cheers! ;)

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@ZahhibbDev Routine is definitely something I need to work on haha. I'm lucky to just have a lot of spare time but I work very sporadically and willy-nilly. Best of luck on your adventure!!

[@steliosstavropoulos499]

Woooow this is amazing!!! You should do a tutorial series when you finish it!! U r awesome man!!

[@PrismaticaDev]

Definitely :) I'll be doing an expansion to my Landscape Interaction system for water interaction as well!

[@nawako2609]

Fantastic stuff! keep up the good work.

[@PrismaticaDev]

Thanks Nawako! Glad you like it :)

[@jacekb4057]

Amazing man!! Would love to recreate this with some tutorial or buy on marketplace. I cannot get the UE watersystem river to do that...

[@lucascavallari8489]

That's pretty awesome! Do you already have a tutorial on this? I intend to create my own water system since I made a swimming system but I'm having trouble with the water plugin in some parts.

[@RaVeNMaddStudios]

Is this still a WIP or did I miss the tutorial somewhere? I tried to find it on your twitch, but it all seems to be cleaned out? I'm interested in getting a nice visual for flowing river water, and this has been the best I could find! Either way, amazing job! Keep up the great work! - RaVeN

[@PrismaticaDev]

Hey hey! I cover some elements of it in my Distance Fields 1 & 2 video, and SingleLayerWater video

[@RaVeNMaddStudios]

@@PrismaticaDev I know, I was just hoping for the more in-depth version like you were describing. (7:50) I always like to increase my knowledge base. Plus I would attempt to integrate as much as possible in to UE5. Anyway, thanks for the response! Your stuff is mind blowing and I will be coming back here much more in the future! Side note, if your are interested in working together on a UE5 side project, feel free to hit me up.

[@bobcharlotte8724]

Do you work in a Dexter style kill room? You should, because you're killing this!

[@PrismaticaDev]

I sure do! It keeps all of my nerd sweat off the carpet haha

[@addisonduke9979]

I know this is an old video, but do you think you’ll ever do a full walkthrough of the material like you mention at the end?

[@PrismaticaDev]

I cover most of the effects in my Distance Fields videos, if you haven't checked them out already :)

[@addisonduke9979]

@@PrismaticaDev I did, but the second video ends just before showing how the full water displacement effect is combined with the DistanceFieldGradient mask created. Is there a material node video I’m missing that shows how to achieve the push up and push down before and after the object in the water after the mask is achieved? Sorry, just having trouble connecting the dots.

[@quasak5830]

@@PrismaticaDev kind of same here... I followed your tuts about Distance Fields yet I wasn't able to reproduce water displacement and foam effect...

[@capnc4ke]

Could you do a tutorial for the player interacting with water? Like the waves growing/scaling and fading away behind you as you move?

[@PEMGILRAT]

Is this twitch still available somewhere? i couldn't find it in your twitch page. Everything seems very resent in the twitch. Im trying to do a waterfall for a university project, and this just looks so beautiful :(. any help where to find the tutorial?

[@mannythepirate]

Good stuff

[@PrismaticaDev]

You're the good stuff

[@gamertech4589]

Hey, can create tutorial on unreal water system and extend it for interactive swamp algae, etc

[@cory99998]

is it possible to modulate the speed based on width? As in if you're painting in a river and the river has a choke, the water speeds up.

[@PrismaticaDev]

You could do it manually with the spline - by making the spline segment longer it will appear to flow faster. So yes, it can be done :)

[@cory99998]

@@PrismaticaDev cool!

[@alejandrovillegas5110]

Hey that's awesome! I'm building my own custom water system in ue5, it has different approach but i would love to see how you build yours, maybe it can light a way for me. Is it possible to watch that twitch tansmission where you build it? is it uploaded somewhere? thanks in advance!!! :)

[@Elmarath]

How do you change the speed of the wind but while changing panning texture pans smoothly? When I change the panner speed, panning texture just pans too much quickly. I think you don't control them via blueprint yep?

[@PrismaticaDev]

It's a tough one - the best way is to manually increment a value in blueprint and write it to a Material Param Collection. That way you can change the speed that the value accumulates over time

[@AndrewByrnes1]

Did you make this music?

[@PrismaticaDev]

Hey Andrew! For this video, I sure did :) Usually I use the OldSchool RuneScape soundtrack in my videos but the Prismatica title them and some other music I write myself

[@AndrewByrnes1]

@@PrismaticaDev Very nice

[@nikwalz3429]

Is there a UE5 Plugin to get that crazy water material? Or can I buy it somewhere?

[@PrismaticaDev]

I just made it with base engine features in UE4. I have a plugin that has a more advanced water shader/system in the works

[@nikwalz3429]

@@PrismaticaDev Nice 🙂 I am very interested in how you do the effect of the height and depth before and after the rocks in a river. I have almost everything in my water shader but this crazy feature will take it to the next level. I know it has to do with the distance field but I don't know how to reproduce it. Or is the a video tutorial for this effect from you?

[@mountaene]

distance field gradient and distance to nearest surface alone nearly 250 instructions = not rly peformance friendly + your water is translucent. it's a heavy shader. but looks not bad =)

[@PrismaticaDev]

Actually it’s using the SingleLayerWater shading model so it’s technically opaque haha. With many of the extra unnecessary settings disabled the instruction count is sitting around 500 which is quite manageable :) the great thing about UE4’s shader graph is the built-in Quality switch node, so the more expensive features can be toggled off in the settings menu

[@mountaene]

@@PrismaticaDev in this case, it's fine ) yeah, switch node helping a lot, sadly there are only 2 options to switch ( mid option will be great though). But another thing is shader permutation.. =(

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@mountaene There's an in-built switch called the Quality Switch which has 4 levels of quality, but I'm not sure if you can get very precise control over what actually toggles it (only tied to global qualities)

[@mountaene]

@@PrismaticaDev yeah i know, in ue4 docs only 2 quality switch options documented - low and high, in 4.24 version there are 3 switch nodes, in 4.26 - 4 options.... epic like always. I tried this node quite a bit ago, good to know that they changed this. Tried to toggle detail texturing with this quality switch, seems okay.

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@mountaene Hopefully there are ways for more granular and customizable quality settings like "Water - Ripples on/off" that are distinctly toggleable. I'll be looking in to that soon after my first internal demo :)

[@CGPine]

Someone have full stream video? I cant find it on twich. But i want know how he create slope detection :(

[@CGPine]

slope for waterfall*

[@PrismaticaDev]

Hey hey! Check out my video about VertexNormalWS node!

[@CGPine]

@@PrismaticaDev Thanks :)

[@simonbojedai958]

So did you get the video? ))