Water Shader
One of the first assignments I had at Perfect Garbage upon being hired for their (As of July 2022) Mystery Game was making the water look more like how the art director envisioned. Armed with Unreal knowledge, reference assets, and a whole bunch of youtube tutorials, I got the water to the exact reflectivity desired!
A rather close up still! A CRT post process effect is over the water! Perhaps in the future, the full context will be revealed…
The specifics of creating the shader didn’t involve working from scratch actually! As I was new to water shaders, I was looking at what the previous artist had started, as well as a variety of youtube tutorials, and other water shaders found on Unreal Marketplace.
After adding flow maps to my knowledge, I made a copy of one of the marketplace shaders, and begun adjusting not only the reflectivity, but also the flow, the color, the and the texture of the water.
Due to the style of the game, I initially attempted a more pixelated shader, however the art director preferred the level of reflectivity seen here. That said, the CRT post process effect helps provide a more pixelized effect to the water.
The Shader in motion! The lighter parts are the lights reflecting on the water. The goal was to have the water be dark, yet still as highly reflective as real life sewer water.