Let's Build the RPG! - 16 - Unreal Engine 5 Water System Beginner Tutorial - Lakes and Rivers

[@facewideshutdown5597]

you are really great at this point which telling your knowledge with true voice tone. this means strong expression, makes me watch whole tutorials without getting bored. (like sensei) Keep it up bro

[@NumenBrothers]

Much appreciated!

[@cyberblackbears]

Best KZbin UE5 water instruction, thanks!

[@krakencodegames1366]

Amazing tutorial. Presently so simply, yet full of information and we can tell you have a high level of knowledge about the subject matter you are teaching. I think I'll go watch the entire series now. Great job!

[@salvadorcabrera4941]

It would be more complete and constant in steps than seen on the ue 5! just great

[@Stoermy_]

This is rly a good Tutorial. Perfect :D Thumbs UP

[@GooseDG]

Defiantly deserve more subs than you have, fantastic tutorial :D

[@Koz-yj4vw]

When I pull lakes and rivers into my world, the water texture doesn't render. Do you have any insight or tips to fix this?

[@treebeard7121]

Very helpful! I have a comment and a question. Comment: There may have been an update since you made this video, but I'm not seeing water bodies digging holes into the landscape like they do in the tutorial, so when you first place the lake, it does not come into the level high, for me it appeared at the existing landscape Z level but it was slightly off (more on this later). :) So now there is no lake created if doing this on a flat landscape. You'll just see water lapping on the level surface. I have no idea if there is a setting that now controls that factor or not. And of course, when you drag it to the appropriate depression in the ground, the water appears. Users, including myself have had issues adjusting the Z level of these water bodies after they are placed. You can no longer by default grab the Z handle for the water body to move it up and down until you adjust a setting. I found the answer here, 3rd post: forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-to-reduce-the-water-level-on-z-axis/478057. Basically, In the Asset: Water_Material_Lake, under the Cat: Global Static Switch Parameter Values, go to "Use FixedZ" and check it. This seems counter intuitive, but, now, the control handle for the Water Body Lake will move the water level up and down on the Z level. Question: Based on this tutorial I'll ask, my impression is the UE5 Water System only deals with level bodies of water with a consistent Z setting, unless you've covered this somewhere else. This is disappointing because there is a mountain stream in my future, and I've not looked at Episode 17 yet, but at this point I'll assume the UE5 Water system is not suitable for streams with a changing Z value or waterfalls? Until I can create a stream with slope on my own, (it is possible), I'll mostly likely rely on a couple of inexpensive UE Market Place products. And I'll assume those UEMP products if used, probably do not mix well with the UE5 Water System. For anyone reading, have you tried to mix the UE older water spline materials, with the newer UE Water System? I have no clue at this point how different or alike and compatible those materials are. Thanks! 🙂

[@NumenBrothers]

Appreciate the detailed commentary, Treebeard. I did have luck changing the z of each spline point (in order to do a river gently sloping downward), but like you said, stuff definitely changed with 5.0.3, so I can't say for sure it will work the same way now. Also we'd love to have you on the Discord, if you would like to join!

[@treebeard7121]

@@NumenBrothers Thanks for replying! Is changing the Z for each spline covered in your tutorials? My goal is to create a mountain stream and a slope is required for that. I've not yet looked at episode 17 yet. Thanks!🙂

[@NumenBrothers]

@@treebeard7121 I don't think I specifically cover it, because when I was initially managing my rivers it just simply worked for me. But if you would like to join the Discord, happy to try to work to figure it out: discord.com/invite/U8pCkkUmSN

[@theastralproject1268]

bro youre goated

[@100redeye]

can I ask where you find these options? I've searched through the water_material_lake and can't find cat global static switch at all

[@atphack]

I have enabled the water plugin and restarted but can’t find any water even by searching in the actors

[@BrianHuether]

Great stuff! How about adding foam/vortexes around objects stickig out of the water?

[@3333927]

If I add in any water system, it destroys the whole landscape (it's creating deep rectangular wholes and "mountains" everywhere). I do not know why, but it is impossible for me, to do anything with that water system.

[@notfortheireyes_ommatidium]

Amazing. Thank you so much. :)

[@techno2776]

I have a problem with the Water Plugin: UE5 is not not able to "Package Project" as soon the Water Plugin is activated. When I disable it then it works. But I need water. How can I solve it?

[@iluvmomndad]

How are you able to move your water layer up and down? My water just stays at one location on the height and doesnt move from it at all

[@JohnDoe-tn5qp]

Me too

[@3333927]

Why does the river not follow the splines? At first, it's working, but if I move or add splines, the whole river flows along the y-axis.

[@mercifulhades9830]

Hello, thank you for the tutorial. I have encountered a problem when water system never render its water mesh with custom weight maps applied to a landscape. Can you please give an advise about it? What to read I mean

[@mercifulhades9830]

I have resolved it. So when you import the weight maps into engine you have below a Mode selection, by default it stays as Loaded Only, but you need to user All.

[@kalkutafr]

By any chance did you manage to setup interactivity with the player ? Seems hard to setup since UE5.1.... even the example map inside the plugin doesn't work

[@NumenBrothers]

Episode tomorrow ;)

[@kalkutafr]

@@NumenBrothers Pretty fast answer ! Thank you I will be sure to watch that :)

[@arturnilin359]

But there s way to use water body with hight of landscape. For it go to Waterbrush and disable "affect highmap" option

[@treebeard7121]

Are you saying you can use this setting so each spline point can have individual Z heights, for a stream with a lot of downhill built in? Thanks.

[@kalex07]

Thank you. I did it in the water body ocean and it just made the ocean disappear. Now I have my ocean biome back. 😀

[@barmaleevmax]

it is very strange, that in this system, when rendering Lumen, there are no reflections of surrounding objects and landscape on water. Reflections only appear when using screen-space reflection

[@Mirakuruuu]

I have turned on the both the plugins and activate the landscape layers or whatever but when i dropped the lake onto the map it doesnt exist. Why? Because why not..... *sigh

[@NumenBrothers]

first thing to check is the z level of your landscape. Select your entire landscape (all the pieces) and set the z level to 0. See if that makes a difference. if not, feel free to join the Discord. Typically we're able to solve this pretty quickly.

[@Mirakuruuu]

@@NumenBrothers Seems like i had to delete all the landscape and recreate new ones for it to work for whatever reason. I guess UE5 is still broken

[@Preirin]

Loving the tutorials but i do have a question: when I add my lake, the water floods my plain. I've tried lowering the water plane and raising the landscape but I can't get it just right. Either I have a super deep lake or part of my landscape is majorly flooded. How can I fix this?

[@NumenBrothers]

The culprit is almost always the Z value of either the landscape or the water. If you're playing with the transform of both and unable to get it working, feel free to join the Discord- we have a text channel literally dedicated to issues with water 😆

[@Preirin]

@@NumenBrothers Thanks for the response. I'll tell you, I've been experimenting, as has an incredibly helpful moderator on the Unreal Engines forums, and although the water system works on small or flat maps, once you bring in a heightmap of reasonable size (say 500km X,Y and 650m Z) the waster system breaks. Confirmed bug, apparently. Seeing as most of us want somewhat of a larger map at some point (even open-world) with water bodies (lakes, rivers, streams) this is a huge issue. Question: have you had any success on a sizeable heightmap (Gaea, World Machine, etc) of at least 5000km or larger using this water system? If so, can you detail how? Thanks mate!

[@franklinbeni]

Hi. First, thanks for your amazing videos ! Your channel is very helpful ! I am having a problemn with Water System / UE 5.1 (with world partition landscape). I made a river like in your video. It's run ok on editor. But when i pack shipping build, the river doesn't flow in the right direction. I notice that it flow in one direction and if I turn it the other way and generate a new build, it stops flow and stay like a "lake". This only happens in build. In the editor it works correctly. Do you have any idea what it could be? Sorry my English. It's not my native language...

[@NumenBrothers]

Hi friend, apologies, I have zero (really, zero) experience packing/shipping a build. I'm sure it has to do with the experimental status of UE5 water, but I can't speculate further than that.

[@garrytalaroc]

hey about your willow trees, where do you get that? is that free asset?

[@NumenBrothers]

Yes, free asset. It's the City Park Environment collection: www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/city-park-environment-collection

[@garrytalaroc]

@@NumenBrothers thanks

[@ryanhunnicutt2278]

Great tutorials, but I am having a problem. My characters can walk on water? Any thoughts?

[@NumenBrothers]

On the static mesh actor for your water mesh (if you use, for example, a water plane), change the Collision Presets to 'WaterBodyCollision'. That should do it. We address this in one of the water footstep episodes- but I can't recall exactly where!

[@agauerm]

I don't know why the water body is destroying my landscape and also creating landscape when I drag and drop into it.

[@vasilchorny]

How sculpt with the bottom of the lake unreal engine 5?

[@NumenBrothers]

I experimented a bit with this. It doesn't look like sculpting the bottom of a lake works in Landscape mode. But if you select the 'WaterBodyLake' in your level, and then in the Details Panel, under Terrain -> Curve Settings -> Elevation Curve Asset, there are some alternative curves of the lake that you can experiment with. What I would recommend is, if you want some features or a specific shape on the lake bottom, use static meshes instead (on top of the landscape), to sculpt out a shape you are going for. You can place as many static meshes you want along the lake floor to give it the shape you need. Like for example, if I wanted to make a deep chasm in the lake, I would make the entire lake that deep, and then use static meshes to create the chasm effect on the sides of it. Static Meshes will give it better style regardless. Hope that helps!

[@marcapouli7805]

You can sculpt on top of water by adding a landscape layer.

[@sudanemamimikiki1527]

how about adjusting the color of the water? i need darker color for mine and its at the moment just completely clear...

[@NumenBrothers]

Check out the ocean episode

[@sudanemamimikiki1527]

@@NumenBrothers you mean a different video from this one or the part of the video where you explain how you created an ocean?

[@sudanemamimikiki1527]

@@NumenBrothers oh right this is a different video from the one i thought it was... sorry yeah. ill try check that out

[@jessicagarcia6303]

my water is being weird, isnt mapping to the landscape, it either overlaps everything or goes under the landscape

[@NumenBrothers]

Feel free to join the Discord, we can see if we can solve it

[@Leader-uq5im]

I have this problem where my water texture stops before the corner which makes it look odd, is there a way to fix this?

[@NumenBrothers]

I would have to see the specific example. My guess is it has to do with the fact that water is still experimental. You might try sculpting your landscape around the water a little differently and see if that fixes the issue. Also feel free to join our Discord if you would like to post some screenshots/details. I or someone else might be able to help.

[@Leader-uq5im]

@@NumenBrothers thanks for answering! love the series and only few explain as good as you do.

[@GatlingHawk]

THANKS alot for the video. i applied the ocean one. was wonder how to make the water not appear transparent when i get below the surgace

[@NumenBrothers]

Hi Gatling, you'll have to adjust the postprocess volume that's attached to the water actor (river or lake). It's in the details panel, if you scroll down and look for the postprocess volume. Feel free to join our Discord, and we can see if we can figure it out.

[@GatlingHawk]

@@NumenBrothers THANKS ALOT MAN! deserve every sub! another issue im having, is when i approach the water in the viewport there seems to be a square void in the water that appears around my camera. it disappears when i zoom away

[@tie.garcia]

Thank you

[@wco3095]

What if I want to add a custom bottom to the lake or river? How do I sculpt that hole and just add the water to it?

[@NumenBrothers]

You have to make a choice between sticking with the new UE5 water, which only works with landscapes, or using instead a custom water plane. If you want to see an example of that, check out episode 13, about 80% through the episode. You can do it with the new UE5 water though. What I would do for a lake is increase the Channel Depth to the maximum depth you want it to be, and then the Curve Ramp Width would be very short- could be as low as 0. And then use static meshes to create a custom floor of the lake. There's nothing stopping you from embedding static meshes into your landscape under the water. That's what I would do for a custom bottom. For a river, it's the exact same idea, but you need to select an individual spline point, and under 'Terrain', there's the same Channel Depth and Curve Ramp Width settings. Hope this helps

[@wco3095]

@@NumenBrothers Thank you so much. I will try it out, it sounds like it'll work out

[@anyvoxelisimportant]

Nice video! I have a problem with the water system. When i try to move my lake around the map , i don t know why but everything gets destroyed and deformed. Can you help me?

[@NumenBrothers]

If you look at the other comments on this video there's some good guidance on how to address new issues with the experimental water system that began to occur on a version after I released this video (I think it began on 5.0.3, but I'm not positive about that). If you're still having trouble, I recommend joining our Discord, and we would be happy to help. Several folks now on the Discord with experience with the water system and issues they've encountered.

[@anyvoxelisimportant]

@@NumenBrothers Yes i would like to join can you give me a link?

[@NumenBrothers]

Sure thing: discord.com/invite/U8pCkkUmSN

[@hotbergina]

in river parameters i dont have the options velocity etc... please help

[@NumenBrothers]

Hi Emma, what version of Unreal Engine are you using? Feel free to join the Discord and we can see if we can help

[@hotbergina]

@@NumenBrothers hello, it actually works. but yea i wanted to know if its easy to change the direction of the water ? ok for discord

[@aaronmaguire2867]

hey bud, loved this guide. just curious how would i go about adding the stylized water to follow the river bed map?

[@facewideshutdown5597]

Hi, i watched a lot of tutorials about waves but i didn't find solution for my project. isn't there any source for a realistic beach side tutorial and realistic waves with foam? can you suggest me? i really stuck in it. And if you make a tutorial for this i would be glad to learn from you too. Even if you suggest another source before...

[@NumenBrothers]

I also did some looking around and you're right- there's not much out there on how to integrate waves with the water. The only one that is close is this, but there's a comment saying this isn't working with the latest version: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j4KtgYCGoq-BpJo&t I would also recommend checking out this Unreal Engine deep dive on water, it looks like this guy has waves working on his ocean: kzbin.info/www/bejne/baqQeoegmNmnjZo&t I am going to cover this functionality in the future I am sure- there will be an ocean in the game I'm designing and so I will have to go into it eventually. However, it's going to be awhile before I dig into it in earnest. I'm deliberately postponing going into detail on newer features like water, because it's still quite new, in the experimental stage, and there isn't too much documentation on it. I know it will be easier to refine the water system the longer I wait. My advice to you (depending on how far along your game is) is work on other things that are essential to your game and give the water system time to mature. So for example, in my case, my goal is to get a working prototype of gameplay (how the game will actually play) as quickly as possible. I can build out my main levels later, but what's essential is that the game will play well. So to that end, the immediate priority is to figure out gameplay abilities, figure out how AI is going to work, etc. So that's where I would focus, and all the icing on the cake, special effects, etc., can come later in the process of game development.

[@facewideshutdown5597]

@@NumenBrothers thanx for fast reply. Yes i watched both of them. first one didn't worked for me too. Second one is full of chaos. Laggy stream and hard to see all BP detailes. especially "main water material". And beach side water dissapears on some points like my waves. Big waves are really unsatisfactory My project is not a game. İt's like an advertising film. 'Logo shaped' big island and a few cinematic shots for summer products on beach side and maybe some in water. But water is so death. it's the my stuck point :/ if i can't figure it out , island will be trash. I wish you success in your game work. maybe i will be one of the first players of it :)

[@NumenBrothers]

@@facewideshutdown5597 It looks like you could do this using a Niagara Fluid Sim, just at a large scale. It looks like Niagara Fluid sims can do waves and foam currently. This is a cool demo I just saw: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r36Tppd7mJWkoNE Next episode will be the very first one on Niagara in my series, unfortunately won't get to water in quite a bit (starting with fire), but I bet you can figure it out

[@facewideshutdown5597]

@@NumenBrothers Definitely this one that i pinned to browser a few weeks ago, and i clearly decide to start this project :) But again no tutorial and source... Anyway i must work on Niagara Fluid Sim if i want to success, like you say... By the way, when you solve something, I will be very happy if you share it.

[@CasualPlay_1]

Is anyone else's water solid? And if so, do you know how to fix it :/

[@willwatkins3343]

1 year later. Still experimental.

[@KeepItSimplePC]

seems impossible to use this feature on an open world 8k map

[@NumenBrothers]

I haven't tried it with World Partition and Level Streaming, but since you can tell UE5 which parts of the landscape to load in at any given time, I don't see a reason why you couldn't start with a small river in part of your level, and then slowly add spline points while you load in your landscape piece by piece, and unload the parts of your landscape that you're done with. To enable this check out kzbin.info/www/bejne/rmSkc4V4qa-snpY

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

Have you noticed that lakes dont work in UE 5.0.3 ?

[@NumenBrothers]

I just did a quick check to make sure and I'm still able to pull in a WaterBody Lake actor onto my landscape. Where do you get stuck?

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

@@NumenBrothers I dragged in lake body actor and I didn't get any water . The water was beneath the terrain, quite far, and there was some kind of "water" in the lake but it was transparent without waves and such , but underwater effects worked.

[@NumenBrothers]

We had someone in our Discord who reported a similar issue and was able to solve it. Feel free to join the Discord and post in the Question and Answer channel- I bet someone will have experienced a similar issue. Apologies that I don't have experience with it myself.

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

@@NumenBrothers walla, where can I find the discord Link 🔗 ?

[@Duskyberry]

I am also having this issue did you find a way to solve it?

[@Gorgonzeye]

Adding a lake destroys half my landscape for some reason.

[@faxin-studio]

not support path tracing

[@ethanwasme4307]

Ben Cloward from wish xD

[@natepetrie1216]

The way that you do backups and talk about backups stresses me out. Surely UE has a version control system? You shouldn't need to "remember to make a backup" because you should never be in the situation where you could destroy your project irreparably. I hope you're just doing this because you don't want to teach people about version control on top of everything else right? ... right?

[@NumenBrothers]

That's because you're watching Amateur Night at the Apollo. If you have a faster, easier way, I'm all ears.

[@natepetrie1216]

@@NumenBrothers I didn't mean to be disparaging, I'm really enjoying the tutorial so far, and it's valid to not use it for something like this, particularly because it's already very information dense. However, if you're not using version control software for your other projects, my advice is take the time and learn to use it. Obviously, I don't know UE (otherwise I wouldn't be here) but it does support git apparently. There's a video by "Cobra Code" titled "Version Control in Unreal Engine 5" that might be a good starting point. It will be a slight learning curve, and it takes some set up, but I promise it's worth it. You won't need to remember to back anything up, and you'll never have to worry about accidentally destroying your project again. You'll be able to switch back to any version of the project at will, and once you get the hang of branches, it becomes trivial to experiment, and include or discard experiments freely. It also gives you an exact list of everything that's changed between versions. Also, if you ever want to work in a team environment, it's basically mandatory.

[@NumenBrothers]

Yes- that's it- the team. Much appreciated@@natepetrie1216

[@eddy-readysteady-go9001]

One year later and they still have basically the same water system🙄