Crest is a class-leading water system authored by professional game developers.Documentation • Email • Discord • GitHub • YouTube • XImportant: The Shallow Water package is NOT required for shallow water. It is an integrated shallow water simulation - a next-generation feature. Crest 5 can still have shallow water using the same features as Crest 4 does.Crest is a trusted water solution by many studios for its quality and performance. It has been implemented in several successful games & simulators and the subject of SIGGRAPH talks.Nominated for Best Artistic Tool in the 16th Unity Awards.Crest 4 x 5 HighlightsSupports all render pipelines in one packageRe-architectured to further performance scalabilityMany new improvements and featuresSome features (mostly deprecated) have been removed. Some have been moved to separate packages. Please check the Release Notes.WorkflowAdd water in minutes with two components (water surface and waves)Sane and balanced defaultsHelpful tooltips including materialsDetailed help boxes display validation errors direct in the inspector with buttons to fix problems directlyOnline and offline documentationFully documented scripting APISupports all three render pipelines in one assetImports into the Packages directory as an editable UPM packageFeaturesState-of-the-art LOD system achieving class-leading performanceInput system for modifying water data using textures or renderers like mesh, trail, line and particle renderers. Supports Shader GraphDeterministic FFT and Gerstner waves with innovative "equalizer" style wave authoringMultiple wave sets can be blended together including local wavesPhysically based rendering with simulated light transport including reflection, refraction, scattering, caustics approximation and shadowingWater shader ships as a Shader Graph (only two nodes, internals are still HLSL)Underwater with partial submersion and meniscusQuery water displacement, normals and velocity using GPU (CPU with separate asset)Water bodies with varying heightDynamic wave simulation for dynamic object-water interaction including wakes, ripples and reflectionsShallow water wave attenuation which dampens waves based on terrain depth (not the same thing as shallow water simulation which is a separate asset)Foam simulated from turbulence and shorelines with accumulation and dissipationSoft shadowing simulationFlow to enable horizontal motion of water surface including displacements, normals, foam and causticsSurface clipping to carve hulls/caves out of water surfaceAlbedo layer to apply color onto water surface similar to decalsPlanar reflections including Total Internal ReflectionsFlexible time synchronisation to support networking and cutscene TimelinesExtensions assets below for more featuresMuch more…Please see the Frequently Ask Questions section in our documentation for more important information.Sample scene selection may not include ones shown in marketing materials and screenshots.CompatibilityUnity 6 Preview supportedUnity 6 URP Render Graph & compability mode supportedMotion Vectors (HDRP and Unity 6 URP only)Depth based effects like Depth of Field (HDRP and URP only)Raytraced Reflections (HDRP only)Forward, Forward+, Deferred, Perspective and Orthographic supportedStereo Rendering (VR/XR) supportedLimitationsBIRP XR single-pass instanced is currently broken (Unity bug)URP XR multi-pass is currently broken (Unity bug)Planar reflections currently do not support XRManipulating data with Shader Graph is not supported with HDRP (Unity bug)These known limitations may be solved in future versions.ExtensionsThese are optional extensions.CPU Queries: Not required as there are GPU queries provided. This is for GPU-less environmentsPaintPortals: Restrict rendering. Useful for aquariums and portholesShallow Water: A shallow water simulation. Not required for shallow water as Crest has wave attenuation. It is a next-generation featureShifting Origin: Keeps the camera at zero. Only needed for very large worldsSplinesWhirlpoolRequirementsUnity 2022.3 or Unity 6 (latest patched version)Shader Graph packageShader compilation target 4.5 or aboveGraphics API that is not OpenGL or WebGLOne license required for each individual user (see EULA)As a general requirement, it may be necessary to update to the latest patched version of Unity in order for a problem to be solved. Furthermore, legacy versions of Unity are not supported.Crest 4 MigrationThere is no assisted migration from Crest 4 to Crest 5. All GUIDs have been regenerated so Crest 5 can be imported alongside Crest 4 for manual migration.Asset CompatibilityWe avoid non-standard techniques and are not aware of any major incompatibilities. Third party assets will need time before integrations are available. We have a list of known integrations including Dynamic Water Physics 2 (DWP2), Enviro 3 and Expanse.Crest is built to be powerful, flexible and scalable which may not be suitable for low-end mobile devices. Several studios have successfully launched using Crest on Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox. We do not have access to consoles ourselves but often integrate feedback from studios.Crest has limited support for rendering multiple cameras simultaneously, as would be required by split screen multiplayer for example, as the LOD detail is centered around one position (normally the main camera).The Crest code contains MIT-licensed code. The copyright notices are specified in the included file ThirdPartyNotices.md.
