UE5: Infinite Ocean on ANY Landscape (at ANY Height)

I hear a lot of people saying you can't add ocean from Epic's free Water Plugin to existing landscapes. Well, I'm here to put that straight and show you how to add infinite oceans to small landscapes, large landscapes (8K) and even World Partition Landscapes.
00:00 - Intro
00:36 - Add Ocean to 2K Landscape
23:33 - Extra Steps for 8K Landscape
30:56 - Extra Steps for World Partition Landscapes

[@tiberiusgames1109]

This is the best video on ue water! Great additional info beyond the basics that other videos show.

[@shysmaptutorials]

Thank you SO SO SO SO much for this!!! I kept wanting to use the in engine plugin features but could never figure out how to get it to work with large landscapes. You are so wonderful for putting this out there!

[@Project_Erasmus]

This is a gamechanger for my landscapes. This, combined with what you tought me/us with your island tutorial will make for some very nice projects. Thank you!!

[@UnrealByYourself]

Your tutorials are very good, I will say the most relaxing and informative that I seen so far. Keep doing this awesome work. It helping a lot of new comers, even advanced Unreal user.

[@mikesh8120]

This is the first really good and understandable tutorial on the subject that I found on KZbin. Most are way too fast and only show parts. Your video is pleasantly calm, shows everything step by step and you can follow it very well. Thank you very much!

[@im.jewels5349]

Hey, just wanted to say thank you for not just showing us how but for also explaining what each change effects. Most other videos just say change this and change that to these numbers etc but you explained changing this number, changes the wave distance or wave height ect. Awesome...Thank you

[@toppefall]

Heh, this has become my go-to reference whenever I'm adding water to a level. Thank you!

[@daedae2493]

Thank you so much for this video!! Its been an eight month battle to figure all this out and get nowhere. Can't tell you how many time I've rebuilt maps, scrapped projects, and started from scratch to end up back at square one. Thank you again, you're a sanity saver!

[@1d33f1x3]

Oh my god, this has been driving me nuts for more than a year. I've been trying so many things since 4.26 came out, including rebuilding a map twice, and 5 minutes in to this video it works perfectly. Thank you so much!

[@stephancoupland1686]

Clearest tutorial I have found on Unreal's Ocean system, and helped me solve several issues I have had. Thank you!

[@UNKNOWNUSER-fv6nk]

U cannot imagine how long I've been searching for a good tutorial on this topic, thank u so much

[@namondastudio4616]

Thanks Bro !! Amazing and usefull Tuto !! Merry Christmass !! Bless

[@boyandthebubble]

Ive been trying to work this out for month THANK YOU SO MUCH

[@stonefacex]

People seem to like how calm you explain stuff...I'm acutally too unpatient for this. However I knew this tutorial and now I was looking for it again because I know that your advices give very good results. I appreciate your help very much! Thank you.

[@robertgoldbornatyout]

Thank-you for Your excellent tutorials they are all very good, they also are very relaxing informative and easy to follow along with, that I have seen so far on KZbin. Please, can you keep doing this awesome work. It's helping me so much and probably a lot more newcomers, even advanced users as well👍👍👍🌼🌼🌼🌻🌻🌻

[@davegaudet1855]

Very well explained. Thank you for making this! I was wondering, however, if you have any advice/tips/tricks for helping to reduce the obvious tiling in the water when viewed from a higher perspective. I know that there are adjustments that can be done with the Gerstner settings, but they don't seem to improve the tiling. Thoughts?

[@7RGBT]

Thanks, I was struggling so much with it.👍

[@ChuckstaGaming]

"I hope you found this tutorial useful" Damn, I don't think I have come across anything more useful! This will now stop me from losing my mind over the water plugin! And losing anymore time! Thanks 😁 SUBSCRIBED!

[@MichaelEmbers]

Great job hope you keep helping us!

[@michaczarnecki1679]

You saved my day or even days. Thanks a lot!

[@janszczygielski1856]

Thank you! This tutorial helped me a lot!

[@RiverFox_YT]

thank you so much for this. great job

[@rivermansky63]

Another great tutorial, thanks!

[@PaulMenefee]

You are a GREAT tteacher! The cadence and commentary besides "click here, click there" is invaluable. It's obvious you know what you're talking about. Thank you! Please keep the brain dump coming.

[@TorQueMoD]

Just a pro tip for everyone regarding texture streaming pool size; an iPad 8 has 3GB of system memory that is shared with graphics processing meaning the default setting of 1GB is a hold over from the first release of UE4. You can easily set your texture streaming pool to 3gb+ even if you're targeting mobile as your release platform.

[@peterbengtson7406]

Such a godsend! Thanks!

[@saitamassj2475]

Bravo bud, excellent tute.

[@tgykurtulus]

a great tutorial ! because gives the trick. Changing that blend type saves life! I can not believe why epic uses that setting as default!

[@PikBo100]

i cant understand why my character is walking on water, tried to disable water collisions but when my character is touching the water, he is destroying

[@ceottaki]

Thanks for this video, @UnrealityBites, very well explained and still very relevant. One issue I am getting with 5.3 is that I have following your tutorial exactly on a pre-existing landscape of mine but, weirdly, the post processing volume for underwater does not kick in unless I am deeper into the ocean, for about half the depth of my ocean the view is clear, and then it comes in once I go deeper. I have tried changing the collision extents but the Z value seems to make no difference whatsoever. Any ideas on how to fix that? Thank you again!

[@msinclaircorp4571]

yeah super usefull, thanks for sharing!!!!!!

[@philippec7213]

Cristal clear ! 👋👋👋

[@reliquary1267]

Also, this tutorial is a GAME CHANGER !!

[@jommjustonemoreminute6977]

Good tutorial; I like the style of it. I'm using UE 5.3 and when using MAX blend, the tip regarding changing the channel depth to 8000 doesn't work - and why would it? MAX means 'can only raise the terrain and never lower it' so I'm not sure how you got that to work?

[@HiraethGame]

Great work, just what I looked for. Can you add rivers tutorial as small update? ;)

[@nathaniel8422]

thanks for the video. I sculpted landscape (mountains) but performance hit is heavy with it. Is it possible to workaround so that sculpted landscape does not hit performance hard. Or I need to make a mesh and import it.

[@Arthur-pc1eh]

Super useful, thanks for clearing this messy s**t of a water system. But I can't manage to change the depth of the sea ("Channel depth"). Whatever value I type in, it always has the same look. And I'm starting to get sick of having to constantly pause any tutorial cos nothing seems to be the same. Do you know what could be causing the issue? Many thanks again.

[@tiagorvmartins]

Hey thank you for the video! By the way, have you tried doing this with smaller Landscapes having like 1009x1009 resolution? I am having some weird issues, thank you!

[@reliquary1267]

EDIT: I meant to convey that I have displacement textures for my ocean/lakes/rivers but there's no info on how to use them. I'd like to add rivers without deforming the terrain and don't want to "hack" the water system's mesh and angle brushes to prevent it. Gaea created perfect river banks and I don't want to modify them. Great tutorial that I keep coming back to and everyone needs to see.

[@Hueventure]

This may not be the best solution, but put your rivers in another layer. If you have edit layers enabled, in the landscape design tab, you can put anything on any layer by creating as many layers as you want. That should help separate things for you more in the least. Then when making your rivers you can smooth them out more. There is a couple tutorials, one of them i think is from the Unreal team themselves. You should be able to smooth out the amount of aggressiveness or influence of the terrain change

[@sonicalstudios]

Just a thought you could put a single plane at the bottom level that expands into the distance with the same texture as your landscape

[@ThunderWorldInteractive]

Okay so that works, awesome thank you, but now when I attempt to add a river or lake/whatever it flattens my landscape again, any tips? If I disable affect landscape the water doesn’t render

[@angelcutebxtch8723]

Very good tutorial. Where can I get the landscape from?

[@TileBitan]

How would you do an ocean that sits on top of a virtual heightfield mesh? The VHM would be the surface and the underwater terrain, but when you zoom out it flickers a lot

[@MichaelEmbers]

Hey when i am under water i get a strange circle and some non rendering of the post process to the right of my camera any ideas?

[@jrs7052]

Great Video! How do I add a lake, and river to this?

[@Cheese3493]

Is there anyway you can help me, I have tried this countless ways and every time I end up getting an ocean clipping and floating above the landscape.

[@ZacTolley]

Is there a way to create an ocean in which you don't see any land? All the stuff I've seen so far has an island, or in this case the highest point of a landscape peeking through.

[@KiwiHawk-downunder-nz]

D we need to make the same adjustments to the lakes and river tools please?, Thes would be great to use together if we can get a more realistic look rather than the toony Fortnight look

[@vasilchorny]

Hello can you make big landscape like 4000 on 4000 and add to this big map lakes. Because I have problems with work of water plugin with big world

[@rossedwards6503]

I tried adding this to World Partition landscape with a 8k heightmap and it dropped from 100 fps to 5 fps, are there any quality/rendering settings for the 'Water Body Ocean' that could be tweaked to give it a chance?

[@diegodaly]

Thanks!!!

[@josebravo7998]

For some reason I can't get the WaterBodyOcean to change based on wave params (at around 20:00 in video) - I've assigned it and everything, help?

[@adamjohnson1678]

Can this work with multiple landscapes? I'm trying to figure out if the UE5 Ocean plugin will be good with my project. I am making a massive open world game. It is going to be like a black flag/ Sea of thieves' type. So, a lot of sailing to different islands and underwater exploration.

[@avistryfe4534]

How do i adjust the water depth? It sets at a seemingly default depth. Changing the heading indicating water depth "512" does not increase the actual sea floor lvl. It just stays flat at the same depth. And trying to lower it with sculpt does nothing visibly. But if i hide the water i can see the changes.

[@lolaswift111]

Many thanks for the tutorial. When there are waves, the ocean water emerge from under the landscape. This happens after I applied some landscape auto material. any help would be much appreciated

[@jd-foo]

Have you guys tried adding a second water volume (river, lake) after the ocean one is in place? It totally fucks things up for me.

[@yungsofa8084]

im having an issue where the water isnt wrapping around my landscapes. seems to only be an issue when using world partition.

[@nathaniel8422]

Hi, I am beginner. I have landscape with water ocean around, it looks good on that landscape area. However I wanted that world is a bit larger, so I expanded landscape to largest size (255x255). However, now at end of my landscape is ambis (like an edge to water ambis below. Of course, this is not how I would like to look, so is it possible to fix this (I have small descend of landscape water to larger and larger depths.

[@unrealenvironments-speedle782]

thanks! but what if you want to add a river? they seem to never work correctly

[@proflooney]

I dunno what I am doing wrong I go into the create new open world drop in th eocean and it covers my land and if I try to move the ocean it just makes a hole in my land How do I lower the level of my ocean?

[@through-it]

My landscape disappear when I put ocean body into a scene. I tried all options of "Blend Mode", but nothing helps. I can change landscape only inside a water spline of the ocean body. But not as in tutorial. What did I miss?

[@user-mf7lx6tv5x]

Hello I ran into the following problem (all the search engines and on different sites clambered - there is no answer!) UE 5.1.1 - Third Persons - Turn on Water - reload engine... create default Landscape and Ocean (all by default). The character runs on the surface of the water! I understand that this is a problem with Collision (water and character) - but where to set it up - HZ! Help with advice - where to set it up?

[@IamNeighborlee]

Hi. Just wondering…lg complex. Sculpted terrain project, running on a rx6600 8gb, 16gb ram via ryzen 3600. Adding ocean crashes gpa , wondering is it because my system atm isn’t up to an ocean with this 5101 terrain or maybe. A. Bug in 511? Thx 👋

[@Evictus]

Any idea why this lags or crashs an 8km x 8 km x 0.67km open world map? I feel like it has something to do with world partition loading the whole map while while editing, but I am unsure

[@aethylwulfeiii6502]

Why is there a big square hole in my landscape, this would be game changing if it actually worked. I imported my massive topo cloud mesh and now there is a big square hole in the middle of the ocean where there is suppose to be water?

[@onej-914]

Best!

[@Bail3yPlayz]

This is still at one leveled height?! My river in my open world real world height map is very big and is at different heights how do i form the water to height map heights?

[@starestd]

would love to have this work with rivers / lakes

[@codymccarty9327]

It doesn't? I know the water plugin has rivers and lakes. How does it not work?

[@slabbash4233]

Hi, help me please. When I change the blend mod to max, UE crashes, how can I solve it?

[@ronnin2011]

Hey, quick question, can u integrate NVIDIA waveworks 2.0 on Unreal 5?

[@angelcutebxtch8723]

It would be good if you could do a video on World Partition.

[@thedefaultcube1218]

so i deleted unral and the marketplace,....and redownloaded everything,...seems to be in default mode,...but....my ocean dosent always meet the landmass without sepertation. the edges down meet the landmass correctly,.... messed with standoff,...edge, width,..angle,.... i just dont know

[@nakedfrijoles]

Seems like changing the ocean body spline scale to 0.1 makes it too small. Idk if something has changed since this was uploaded but I had to set it back to 1.0 in order for the the extents to grow.

[@NikolasBoot]

But if I need delete any area water inside mountain - how I can do this?

[@Gaelrenaultdu06]

Is there a way handle rescaled landscape ?

[@kalex07]

My ocean is flattening my sea floor. Anything under the water level just gets flattened. I unchecked Affects landscape and my underwater biome came back but the water disappeared. How would I fix this please?

[@kulman4295]

There is a "Water Planes" marketplace content by Epic that is supported up to 4.25 - how does this compare to this Water plugin? Have you compared? (Mind you, in 5.0 there is no tessellation so the Water Surface content doesn't upgrade well, you would have to compare in 4.27 or lower)

[@unrealitybites763]

No, I haven't specifically compared those. It's worth noting that, if you use the "Water Body Custom" asset from the Water plug-in, it is effectively a plane that you can place anywhere on your scene. The lack of tessellation for water in UE5 isn't as much of an issue as you think because it uses animated normals to simulate the waves close up. It becomes more of an issue if you want to have fluid-sim ripples as objects move through the water.

[@thedefaultcube1218]

can anyone tell me how to reset the water plugin to default,... i messed up plaing with the settings

[@oliverhayes7220]

Thank you for this tutorial my scene is really looking nice now thanks to this. My only issue is I can't walk underwater, my character just walks on top of the ocean. If I go to Collision Presets and set No Collision, my character drops through, but then there is no underwater post processing. Please can anyone advise me how to fix this? Many thanks!

[@JandenHale]

I have this same exact problem and I'm hoping someone can help.

[@michaelkukula5926]

same problem. my first one works. but whenever i try to make a new one, i turn to jesus

[@miranmuhamed8045]

hello how can i contact you for a job please?

[@etheriondesigns]

Its quite frustrating that the height adjustment isnt a feature in 4.27

[@baudmarch3925]

Even when putting the blend mode to max, nothing appears outside of the curve, anyone knows why ? EDIT : Might have been said in the video, if so, my bad. Otherwise, just make sure to uncheck "Affects Landscape" under the "Terrain" section of the WaterBodyOcean actor Details.

[@TheBradVision]

Thanks. That helped.

[@zeon3d755]

It doesn't work in UE5.1?

[@madchad]

Changing size does not work for me, it makes the entire ocean disappear. What you need to do is select all splines and set all their locations and tangents to 0.

[@1Uik1]

If Adding in UE5.2.1 go into Landscape Mode and make Sure, that the Water layer is UNDER the Landscape Layer (called Layer by default)

[@unrealitybites763]

Thanks for the extra info

[@joshuaholden4303]

I get the exact same results using Alpha Blend or Max, no change in what happens with the height.. On 5.3.2, anyone else have this issue?

[@LOL1423derp92]

will it work with the rivers and lakes as well?

[@unrealitybites763]

I tried it with rivers and lakes but it didn't work. I found a (sort of) workaround for lakes though. If you drag a "Water Body Custom" onto your map, this is effectively a plane of water which you can size and rotate to make a lake and change the water material accordingly (couldn't get underwater processing working here though). Not sure there is a solution for rivers.

[@Celestetinepte]

As of 5.1, it seems like the trick with the spline is not working anymore. Unless I messed up something

[@Gobguil]

Agree

[@Michael-lc8bv]

When I add my Waterbody Ocean I get an untextured plane...how do I fix this. I followed all your steps.

[@Michael-lc8bv]

When I fly the camera into the ocean the visibility will change and look like I am under water BUT as soon as i fly out of the water I see nothing.

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

what about lakes ?

[@gigasoftgaming]

When I add the ocean no matter what I did what you did exactly and my landmass disappeared completely I lowered the ocean and it is flat, I am using World Partition with a 10km x 10km map created with Gaea Works on Open World Template but not my map

[@gigasoftgaming]

I don't know if this was the right way to fix it but I just used the open world map deleted that landmass and imported my landmass to it, seams to work now lol

[@Kor3Gaming_Ghost]

funny this is am standing on top of the water lol oh my

[@vasilchorny]

if add not only one ocean. Add 10 lakes in big world

[@redgeciccone8218]

Well it's cool for video scene, but for a multiplayer game this it's not what you could use... to keep a good fps

[@littlearvin1641]

Sadly, it's unstable, prone to crash. (5.3) Luckily there are other assets than Unreal's...

[@engchoontan8483]

Maybe just get AI and google to remake earth using different resolution sea-floor maps to above tidal-terrain maps then do currents-tidal (without wave-action). Reduce resolution for edge-structure, overlay with original-resolution to create a quick-version (reduced resolution blocks, square is 2 triangles) for user-interface. Weather channels will probably "fly virtual" to genrate graphics for their audience in future. Administrators will need to do evacuations with maps and graphics and communications, ... Where to go (in a big flood).? How about to the left.? How about no-picture.? Weather-Balloons with solarCell-sails and skull-cap, with minimal-propulsion to maintain loiter and release from propeller-planes meant-for sky-divers.?

[@engchoontan8483]

Mobile-towers are positional A-GPS. Targetted and localised Small-message-Service (SMS) is easy. Draw area on map with digitizer-mouse and press send.

[@kulman4295]

Unfortunately the water plugin is experimental and not recommended for production. I think a disclaimer would be a good idea here: "use at your own risk, be ready to fix/adjust for production or best extract what you need into a separate project"

[@unrealitybites763]

Yes, that's true, although a warning does pop up when you enable the plugin. I have found it to be pretty stable though, even in final builds (the main problem is the lack of thorough documentation so a lot of features are discovered by trial and error)

[@near5962]

@@unrealitybites763 hi i'm trying to modify my landscape material using dinamic instance, for exemple i would try to make a layer be grass in summer and snow in winter, but it doesnt work, i've searched in many google websites but didn't find anything, do you know a way to do that pls?

[@FlockersDesign]

Just uncheck affect landscape in the water body and you problem is solved Man why wauting people there time ?

[@DevilFruitJourney]

doesnt work

[@Th3Jac0b]

not working at all

[@Th3Jac0b]

nevermind I needed to change some settings. For some of you that meght have similar problem: -change fallof to width and move angle to 0 - drag these white points to the center of highest point - change wawes source to Water waves asset reference It worked for me so try it yourself

[@NoDamageGaming]

@@Th3Jac0b YOOO you are the best. Fixed my problem!