Diving Into the Depths of Water as a Feature in Unreal Engine 4.26

[@tom.looman]

Ryan Brucks and the others at Epic involved in this system have really outdone themselves with this!

[@sam_making_games]

Hey man, I did your Multiplayer C++ course from Udemy. Loved it.

[@tom.looman]

@@sam_making_games Thanks!

[@DutchdaveTanktastic]

Add water to warpsquad :p

[@RwanLink]

The niagara particles with the water was really nice I'll try that.

[@nickgennady]

RwanLink Right? I think you may be able in the future to have those particles move away from collision like they showed the bugs and lights in unreal 5 tech demo.

[@RwanLink]

@@nickgennady It will be very interesting ;)

[@PrismaticaDev]

Congratulations on the latest release - I'm really glad the UE4 team have an official water system now, ongoing support and future features are yet another reason that Unreal will come out on top.

[@CinematographyDatabase]

I am really looking forward to testing this!

[@lubruz7164]

Stop learning new tricks and raising your production values!!!, you are making the rest look bad ;P

[@AgentSmith911]

Water themed video project next? 😊👍🏻 Like Waterworld with Kevin Costner lol

[@epicmatter3512]

It won’t be very real to life because water follows Navier Stockes equation which as of right now is unsolved. If that equation were to be solved water would become true to life in video games because we could easily simulate its movement.

[@scaredyfish]

I love Sjoerd’s presentation style. Straight to the point. Tells you enough that you know where to look to explore further.

[@Hourences]

Thank you :)

[@Retrosen]

This is by far the most advanced thing I've ever seen, I'm impressed with the work at epic its just amazing.

[@ashraf_dz4769]

Nice to hear Your voice Hourences and As always...There is no replace for The Great UE4..Big thanks to you and the Awesome Epic Team

[@Hourences]

Thanks :)

[@blinkrogue1344]

well. Ue5 might take on UE4 xd

[@Quatuux]

1:39 "over the last 2 or 3 months I've built this beach scene with a lighthouse" Thank god, sometimes when I am stuck, I am wondering if the Epic employees do such amazing things in just a day or a week!

[@lukethedukea380]

man i had that exact same thought

[@schoolhomevrtechnologyassi6286]

Not me I thought.. that scene is 3 days work. *3 **_HOURS_** if done in VR editor.* Really! One can spends DAYS PLACING INDIVIDUAL ROCKS IN THEIR SCENE, OR THEY CAN PASS THEIR HAND OVER THE LANDSCAPE LIKE A GOD IN VR AND RELEASE A STREAM OF ROCKS, THAT WILL LAND IN NATURAL AND RANDOM POSITIONS (DURING SIMULATION) and you press 'K' for keep changes made during simulation. (assuming he didn't model the lighthouse as part of a Scene build).

[@darkenergy7291]

Hey guys, I'm loving this sort of in depth feature tours but since you guys already have these videos arranged into neat little sections, why not use youtube's Chapters feature to make it easy for viewers to jump into sections they want to see? or maybe add a list of timestamps?

[@TheBelrick]

Found a bug. if you create the landscape without enable edit layers and then add water. the water is bugged even if you click enable edit on terrain. Delete the terrain and start over with edit enabled THEN add water

[@ibrews]

oh cool they did it :)

[@darkenergy7291]

@@ibrews yes they did! they listen to us! yay!

[@whnvr]

honestly 10/10 video. you accidentally yeeting the ball had me in absolute stitches it caught me so off-guard lmao

[@gorgeousorc]

Really struggling to find an answer to this: At 27:33 you enable HolePositionScale... but nowadays that doesn't exist. Therefore I cannot mask out the Water Mesh

[@smokingham9747]

yeah i cant edit things i would like too nowadays

[@drisicus]

hello! I was looking exactly for this, I can't find a workaround for this feature... Did you find something ?

[@gorgeousorc]

@@drisicus Still nothing

[@MetaIsland]

This project should be done available in the marketplace so that we can study it.

[@Mordynak]

Did you even watch the video? This is an engine feature.

[@Celticninja011]

that would be awesome. I need example projects since I cant seem to get this water feature right in a larger scale.

[@OnigoroshiZero]

I love you guys. Everyone at Epic deserves all the credits in the world for the things you give us. And on top of the great features you add in the engine, you make great tutorial videos like this one.

[@portmandro]

Always love hearing this guy explain things--he's a very good teacher. The water feature is fun to play with so far. I found a few issues while experimenting with it, but then I watched the rest of this video and saw that he addressed each one of those limitations in the video. I'm so glad they're going to continue working on this. Looks amazing!

[@Hourences]

Thanks :)

[@wajidanuzhat7761]

Really appreciate ur efforts for teaching nd explaining us,thnx a lot

[@temtor]

I love how he said “enzovoort” at the start, which is a typical Dutch thing to say

[@kitcoo1]

Greatest system Ever. Worth many many Dollars, much more than 500$ water. Sjoerd de Jong all you Incredible developers, you work Too hard but we Love you for it. Thank You For the Opportunities ,Incredible... Thanks for running us through the system again as well... Merry Happy Holiday's, you certainly deserve it.

[@RazorOfArtorias]

Honestly this is so cool and I have so many ideas I want to try that it's quite overwhelming.

[@MiljanBojovic]

A wooden house collapsing in the river and seeing all the parts being taken away by the current. :D Also a Boat jumping on the Waves like in GTA 5.

[@AdrianDrott]

Used to have Sjoerd as a teacher at Future Games. His amount of knowledge is amazing. Thanks for still teaching me new things. And thanks Unreal for the amazing update. :)

[@user-je2yq7ru8w]

If you want to add this to an existing level ( upgraded from 4.25, 4.24, etc ) - I had to manually add a new water edit layer in the landscape editor mode. Not sure why. I kept dragging water into the level and it did nothing until I manually added the layer.

[@gwkdad]

I'm brand new to unreal editor, using Insurgency Sandstorm SDK (proprietry version 4.25), so I don't know how to do that but could you point me to an example? I would really like to have a flowing river i. My map instead of a static one...

[@user-je2yq7ru8w]

@@gwkdad first make sure you have the "Water" plugin enabled, you might need at least UE 4.26, but then you should be able to drag the "Water Body River" Actor into the level onto the landscape. The Epic Games channel has some other videos on it as well from earlier on.

[@supertaurus2008]

hourences you have been the best at explaining things unreal .. the best examples and the tips and tricks..i remember the time back in 2014 was when i first worked with unreal engine 4 and went thru your Solus project walkthru also that was really great .. and before all this your UDK ha ha so i have been following you for quite a while.. thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@Hourences]

Thanks so much!

[@TheDonderhaas]

This is really exciting and can’t wait for more progress on player interaction. Thanks for the amazing features.

[@AlecInColor]

this is wild- how have I just seen this. awesome work!

[@Mafla-pk8do]

What makes the UE great is that this is probably the forst tutorial I watch, I haven't used Unreal Engine yet, but I understand it

[@SanneBerkhuizen]

17:30 Could this technique be used to create glass? So render as a opaque material. What I'm looking for is actually glass that is reflective, but not as costly as ray traced translucency

[@archichampin]

The lack of documentation regarding this plugin makes it almost impossible to use. I've been playing with it for almost two months implementing it into a project and half of the features he explains in this video are gone on the 4.27 version or don't work the same way. Water materials are really difficult to understand and the engine keeps rendering randomly, sometimes you open the project and there's water and sometimes there isn't. I don't understand why there's no proper documentation about this plugin a year after its release....

[@tobiassimon659]

Is there a way we can get a video about the Material? I just found out how to change the water color (not that hard) but for an example I can't find out how to make bigger waves... Guess it is easy but maybe others have the same or similar difficulties too? Still a good job you made ;)

[@pingusmcdingus5]

I doubt this is going to be seen by anyone that can provide an actual answer but will this ever be updated to function properly under UE5.0/UE5.1? Or has this plugin been discontinued? - Fluid simulation is no longer functional under UE5/UE5.1. It doesn't even work in the Fluidsim_Terrain sample map. - Post processing doesn't work properly for WaterBodyCustom. Even after changing the Water Mesh Override to Cube and increasing the height of the spline point to match the surface of the water, the underwater post process fog effect appears above the surface of WaterBodyCustom. There's no 'split level' effect like the other water types have. - Similar to the previous point, buoyancy doesn't immediately work for WaterBodyCustom unless you change the Water Mesh Override and increase the height of the initial spline. - Buoyancy also behaves differently for WaterBodyCustom. Take BP_BuoyancyExample. It floats in WaterBodyLake and WaterBodyOcean properly, but hovers above the surface of WaterBodyCustom unless I increase the Mass to 200kg. - Caustics on the water material don't appear to work for WaterBodyCustom.

[@manbearfrink]

One thing I noticed is that when adding a Water Body, the WaterMeshActor is not always placed where you place the body. This will make it look like there's no water! Just move the actor (also maybe increase the extents it if you're doing a large open world game).

[@infomaticfilms]

This was a great demo, clear and helpful. Thanks. Looking forward to trying it out.

[@dimaferox5133]

Great update and video tutorial is better than only documentation without simples, thanks!

[@chasedsea072]

That's so cool. Thank you and guys at epic for supporting game developers with awesome tutorials and free content.

[@GianfrancoTronu]

Excellent ! I have no other words to express my admiration.

[@sebastianbarrio6448]

Im really excited to do some stuff with this!! It looks awesome!

[@ryanbrucks3429]

Awesome job showing off and explaining the water tools, Sjoerd!

[@Hourences]

Thanks Ryan :) Thanks for all the help and input!

[@jabetsgi]

THANKS for the new update. It works very well now!

[@geoffrey3668]

Great overview! And it work right off the box with my project. Just get my project in 4.25.3 converted in 4.26 and I could add water body in my project! Thanks!

[@RenormalizedAdvait]

How to model Navier-Stokes with Unreal Engine 5 also the Tsunamis.

[@Silpheedx]

Thank you so so much for this! This is extremely helpful and awesome. :)

[@JJC1138]

Outstanding talk! Thank you very much for making it Sjoerd

[@MustafaBerkeGureltol]

I'm having a hard time completing my simple programming projects for my university classes. My dream of working at Epic Games in any point of my life is long gone after watching this video. These guys don't sleep. Trust me.

[@Ronintados]

I'm really excited to test this feature! Great work!

[@spectator59]

Awesome work. How did you create the large and foamy waves in the sample project? Also, is it possible to cause waves to go over some distance of the shoreline, as real waves do?

[@harrysanders818]

Love your presentations and listening to your voice! Good stuff as always. A fantastic , well thought out system. Extremely well explained. Mindblowing that the shading model is opaque!

[@Hourences]

Thanks a lot :)

[@cactustactics]

@@Hourences I don't do anything with Unreal or any game engines, and this was still really interesting! Doesn't hurt that everything looks so pretty

[@ArulMoorthyM]

Awesome! Lot of details covered. Thank you!

[@DatGuyGLK]

Is foam currently not working?

[@Silpheedx]

Good lord those smart particles are such a frikin awesome genious idea!

[@yuezhang5551]

This is a great overview, wish Epic could have a in depth- how to make the scene soon

[@LEGIT134]

I am modeling a boat for my water scene. It has multiple separate parts to make the ship. I create an empty actor blueprint and fill it up with the different parts that all come together in the fbx I imported into the engine. I make sure it has Physics and gravity is on and then add a buoyancy to my blueprint. I start adding four different pontoons around the ship to hold it up. It would be nice if I could visually see these pontoons and maybe move them around my objects so I could see they were going to float. I created four cubes and placed them around the ship so I could act like they are the pontoons. Then plugin the location of those cubes in the buoyancy pontoons and then delete the cubes and simulate my world. With some playing around eventually my boat either sinks and raises on one end or it totally sinks. Or it slowly raises to the surface and out of the water and turns up side down. It would be so much easier to figure the pontoon business if I could see them:).

[@davinsaputraartandgamedev9453]

any updates o nthis for UE5? Tesselation is compeltely deprecated in UE5 so im really curious on how you guys willl implement in in UE5

[@YanVerde]

26:31 were can we find that get water data at point node? it's not in the Water content folder.

[@vree_]

Really nice tutorial but what is also interesting are the clouds in 2:58! Are these made just with the volumetric clouds + volumetric plugin? If yes is there a specific tutorial for these clouds or do I just need to fiddle around with mats+settings until I get it right?

[@JiggywattArt]

12:45 does the waterbrushmanager not generate maps for anyone else if dragged in manually (not auto-created with lake/ocean)? Not sure how to reference the landscape to generate the maps.

[@samohickey]

Fantastic! Man, you guys make my dreams come true. LOVE YOU!!!!!

[@a.l.murkar6425]

Do you think this will ever work with heightmap-generated landscapes? Such a great plugin but at the moment it seems like it's really just for flat/default landscapes, the z-height issue makes it pretty hard to use otherwise

[@danielsmyth189]

rippling and splashing that I've seen in other vids combined with foaming could be combined for water breaking. reducing water mesh size as it gets closer to shoreline

[@Nevi976]

Great video - I have struggled to find any information on the Water Body Exclusion Volume though and how this works. It doesn't seem to map to the Ocean material that comes with the Water plugin?

[@mikedudley3530]

​ @Hourences Could you please explain Water Body Exclusion Volumes a little more in depth? I tried copying what you made into a material function but I can't figure out how the volume would hook into the material.

[@mikedudley3530]

Does it it have to be accessed through BP?

[@KiwiHawk-downunder-nz]

Can you show us an import of a thrid party height map to use with this water system or adding this water to a pre made level of say, an island please

[@Bunta1987qwerty]

I’m having that issue now. I imported a tiled landscape, but when I try to add an ocean to it, no water appears. It’s about 12km by 12km total. I hope they do a video on this.

[@KiwiHawk-downunder-nz]

@@Bunta1987qwerty I'd test with a smaller map, He does say it's not good over 4k, I tried a 2017x2017 island and the water shows, BUT it masks the landscape OR put a big weird shape around it and lakes just do NOT flow into the current shape, the spline make's it's own shape and destroy's the landscape. it neds to be able to mask to the landscape so it can be used with pre made landscapes without changing them

[@Bunta1987qwerty]

I’m having some trouble. I imported tiled landscape heightmap with world comp enabled, and edit layers enabled. I try to add ocean, and it flattens my terrain with “affects terrain” enabled, but there’s no water if I disable it. Also, under water doesn’t have the post process.

[@michealholloway508]

i thinks its the fall off had the same issue

[@kadulous6357]

The water system looks amazing! Cant wait to put together some projects featuring waves and moving objects with the water! Cant wait for 4.27 and UE 5!

[@joschparacel1668]

Can you Please make a Video, how to create the foam in the water and at the shores in Detail please

[@marios5343]

This is awesome! Unreal is the way to go. Epic Games have done it again!

[@AdolfoDomingues]

I can't find the "hole" parameter you used at 27:30 how do I activate it?

[@acutesoftware]

Great overview - thanks for that

[@importon]

Pleaes make tools to make it easier to reproduce the demo Ryan Brucks made with water interacting with the rocks. Basically every shore environment needs something like that

[@Hourences]

Yeah the setup Ryan had there can be done with the engine as it is today, but it requires all kinds of setup work. It is hard to scale it up. The feature is still experimental and we are working on extending it further. The things listed at the end of my slides are the priority right now.

[@NeverduskX]

This is really impressive. I look forward to seeing how it develops.

[@joeldbenjamin]

The thing we've been struggling with is the transition from above water to below - where the player is actually inside a sub that dives, so the water line needs to be outside the sub windows rather than right in front of the camera. Anyone have suggestions for how to approach that?

[@Hourences]

Can the player ever leave the sub while underwater? If not that would be a lot easier to deal with. In that case you could get rid of the post processing underwater entirely and fake it through the glass material on the sub? For the cut out, you'd need some type of mask map, possibly some more advanced volume texture like setup, that masks out the ocean if the sub surfaces. That would solve the waterline of the waves too if you can manage to get it precise enough, in terms of where the watermesh is cut through, but your biggest problem would be to apply some type of PP effect on the part of the window that is looking under the surface. Check out the default underwater PP material and see if the setup used there to work out that problem is of any help for you when using it on a window, rather than a PP blendable material?

[@joeldbenjamin]

@@Hourences Thanks for the response! (also LOVE the Solus Project! Played in VR) The player cannot leave the sub, and really it's only going to be going up / down when we choose: not dynamically at all. Only via sequencer. So some of that stuff will definitely be easier. And actually this is a VR short film - though all realtime and in engine so saying "player" is just as appropriate. The post processing we're a little less worried about - yeah, we'll probably be able to fake it through the glass. It'd be nice to be able to use something similar to what they have, but only have it show up through the glass object/material. (maybe custom depth?) We looked at the materials for both PP and the water surface but ... what's shipped with 4.26 is NOT what they're looking at in this video, and they're not easy to dive into. We can't even find the regular material attributes to adjust opacity. Just seems a little too new and unfamiliar (largely our inexperience with it). I'm afraid we're going to have to move away from this Ocean system, even though the surface of the water looks fantastic from above and below and would be exactly what we need. Just... the exclusion volumes don't seem to be working, and masking it out doesn't seem to be as straight-forwards as with other materials.

[@markdavidson3219]

Try this video by Mathew Wadstein, kzbin.info/www/bejne/roPbnJZ8hM2BqMU or his title of video WTF Is? Material - Sphere Mask in Unreal Engine 4 He shows how to use a SPHERE MASK to cut through an object. He shows TWO Methods, one from a Third Person Perspective and one from a First Person Perspective Note: he does not talk about a submarine but its uses are endless, i tried it and it works amazingly effective. In my own example i connected his nodes to a Foliage Material's Opacity Mask and Texture Sample and it works. When my Glass Sphere Submarine passes through a dense population of VEGETATION the Foliage just passes around the Glass Sphere of my sub, the effect is impressive feels like there is an atmosphere in the Sub, try this with a VR headset on and your convinced you are breathing air.

[@itsthehawke]

gotta say Sjoerd is my favorite presenter!

[@Hourences]

Thanks :)

[@bighit20100]

Well the Water Exclusion Volume isnt working at all, and there is no such setting as "hole" in the Ocean material... kinda misleading...

[@KULTRAltd]

27:38 Seems like needs to be better explained how it works (in UE5 as an example).

[@Fafmagic]

This is awesome considering how quick you can get this up and running!

[@laggyluk]

there's no 'hole' parameter in default ocean material :(

[@李景天]

This is the most advanced system, I spend hours trying to figure out how to change the color & opacity of the water. and sure, I guess it is too simple of a thing to mention in the introduction.

[@DaGamerDad]

10:07 - Fasten your seatbelt and get some popcorn. 👍

[@KN-ci4dm]

Cool feature! Really curious about how to enable that nice wave foam effects though.... I played with water system a bit and I don't think it's doable by default. Plz do livestream and talk about that too.

[@Hourences]

Livestream at the very start of January :) My foam is a special custom setup, I measure the height of a wave and then add foam if the weight is over x. I also only do this if the water depth is less than y, to ensure that foam mostly kicks in near the shore only. There are other setups possible, there is build in foam support for near shore foam in the standard material.

[@kangna2318]

this is why i love ue4. they make game development super fun and people without much talent can even make a awesome game! thats only if you have patience and not looking at the money part of it.

[@kingAXEL]

Can we have same kind of video about clouds and lighting ?

[@soyunbonus]

Opaque materials for the win!

[@iam.andresilva]

Great video! Would you recommend using the water plugin for a project that will go live in around 18 months from now ? Do you think this plugin will have focus on improvements ?

[@carlossuarez9272]

I came to this video hoping to find the answer to this questions: how would you go about setting up the actual buoyancy parts? How would you set up the Center socket and key in the Relative Location? Or extract the location data of the ship? I appreciate any feedback. but it does not explain anything about how he did it. Could you find the solution?

[@LEGIT134]

I am in the same boat. I can’t really figure out the buoyancy and pontoons enough. It would be nice if they were visible when you create pontoons😁

[@carlossuarez9272]

@@LEGIT134 i found the answer to the buoyancy thing. Try to match the object of you want inside the default box mesh then erase the box and keep the wished object.

[@thirdagegames1605]

Any guess when it will be ready for mobile? Or if it already is, what needs to be modified? Currently it messes up the landscape and the waves look like they have black spots. Would be great if you could release a mobile friendly water material.

[@Hourences]

The water system has been in Fortnite for a while already and works across all devices there, that said I am not sure if we tested it on mobile in UE4 itself yet. The feature is currently experimental still. I will raise the topic with the team and check where we are at there.

[@thirdagegames1605]

@@Hourences would be greatly appreciated

[@vince4417]

This is the first time I heard about the 4K landscape size limit. Wouldve been nice to know that right from the jump.

[@artemaung5274]

It's probably possible to use it with world composition + origin shifting. Set ocean in large level overlapping many tiles maybe even persistent level? and this way it's always near the origin. And you need world composition anyways if you want good performance.

[@Quatuux]

This system is fantastic!

[@MadpolygonDEV]

Can you have water realistically penetrate into the shore line? Like how waves act on beaches

[@gower1973]

Not possible with gerstner, you need proper fluid simulation

[@hugoducrocq4428]

How did you get this foam, I don't figure out how to do it, it seems like we can't do it with Ocean Shader ?

[@danielsmyth189]

can you put the thing at the beginning of the vid at the end have closed a few off, thinking id started wrong vid .

[@beratbingol547]

Siz ne yapıyorsunuz böyle. Harika 👏👏

[@shimmentakezo1196]

I will never be able to make it work, but it seems nice. Waterbodies was a missing part in the engine, very nice feature.

[@KaustavMajumder]

So many mysteries solved! ❤

[@manuvikraman1611]

Lovely, How is this compatible with VR?

[@themarveluniverseonline]

How well does it handle dramatic surface disruptions? For example, a jet flying low over the waters surface.

[@MrZyprez]

Good tutorial with alot of good tips! But i would like to see a tutorial on how to use this with an imported landscape! Seems like there is zero tutorials on that.

[@SomeKindOfMattias]

I think I cracked it, first add an ocean, that will be your "level baseline", then add a landscape layer on top of everything, ie last in the layer list. Import your heightmap to here. Now, this is the tricky bit, your height map must have levels above that baseline, if you lower the ocean and see your landscape there, then the levels is wrong, and you have to adjust your heightmap somehow, probably by adjusting levels in Photoshop or some such. But yeah, seems to work, except fluid sim and foam that I can't make appear for the life of me :) Caustics works tho

[@bassemzammeli1553]

this came out like three days ago I'd give it a couple of weeks before some decent tutorials show up

[@Hourences]

Early January I will be on our livestream and I will show more of my setup. But yes I had exactly that, my landscape in its entirety was imported and I struggled with overcoming this challenge. My solution ended up being incredibly simple and weird at the same time. Since the water brush manager gives you access to the materials used to generate the render targets, if you would take the first 2 materials, and in those materials bypass everything, then that effectively results in the render target no longer being able to affect the landscape. This is very much so a hack. We are working on improving this the proper way. But meanwhile my solution would do it. I will show so early January.

[@reginaldarmah2381]

Both epic games and Unreal engine are awesome. Can't wait to see what UE5 will bring.

[@HaydenWilsonOutdoors]

How do we add water to a pre built map without affecting our landscape? I tried unchecking affect land scape but the water material/texture disapears then..

[@desklabstudio4250]

This is really impressive. Great explanation, this help us lot..

[@3dchuy]

The ripples look so good, I tried just adding the 2 actors to my scene but it doesn't simulate the ripples.

[@xiaolongguo7105]

How to open hole, I can't find the switch here

[@francescofulco9600]

Hi thanks for your very good work. How to set up water for VR? I try but it's no work. From one eye I see all black

[@guy37373]

Can I download dark beach project

[@danielelebash3781]

Is there a time frame for a new version of the plugin with decoupled landscape?