Reflections contribute significantly to the appearance of the water. The look of the water will dramatically changed based on the reflection environment.

Crest uses Shader Graph which makes it, by default, ready to receive all the various sources of reflections Unity provides:

By default, Crest receives reflections from the global cubemap which only contains the skybox.

Furthermore, Crest provides Planar Reflections for both above and below the water (known as TIR) for all render pipelines.

Planar Reflections

Crest has planar reflections for both above and below the water (known as TIR) for all render pipelines.

Usage

For above water reflections:

  • Enable Water Renderer ‣ Reflections ‣ Enabled

  • Enable Water Material ‣ Surface Inputs ‣ Reflections (Planar) ‣ Planar Reflections Enabled

  • Set Water Renderer ‣ Reflections ‣ Layers to the layers you want in the reflections

For below water reflections (TIR):

  • Complete the above steps first.

  • Set Water Renderer ‣ Reflections ‣ Mode to either Below or Both.

  • Set Water Material ‣ Surface Inputs ‣ Reflections (Underwater) ‣ Occlusion (U) to 1

  • Optionally, set Water Material ‣ Surface Inputs ‣ Reflections (Underwater) ‣ Total Internal Reflection Intensity (U) to 1 for full reflections

Configuration

Planar reflections can be configured both from two foldouts:

  • Water Renderer ‣ Reflections

  • Water Material ‣ Surface Inputs ‣ Reflections (Planar)

Additionally, TIR can be further configured in another foldout:

  • Water Material ‣ Surface Inputs ‣ Reflections (Underwater)

Performance

Enabling planar reflections for both above and below water can be very expensive. It is only recommended to have one enabled.

All of the properties in the Water Renderer ‣ Reflections foldout are mostly performance related. They will have descriptive tooltips.

Reflection Probes

Crest is set up to receive reflections from Reflection Probes by default, but further configuration is possible. Please see Chunk Template for more information.

Tip

When configuring your reflection probes for water, consider Box Projection and Probe Blending on both your probes and render pipeline settings.

Screen Space Reflections

Crest supports SSR for both HDRP and URP.

Usage HDRP

HDRP has a separate setting for transparent objects to receive SSR and it is not enabled by default. It is important that you understand the basics of HDRP before proceeding.

  1. Enable Screen Space Refection and the Transparent sub-option in the Frame Settings.

  2. Add and configure the SSR Volume Override

    • Please learn how to use the Volume Framework before proceeding as covering this is beyond the scope of our documentation:

      Fig. 4 Adding Volumes to HDRP (Tutorial)

  3. Enable Receives Screen-Space Reflections on the water material.

Usage URP

Preview

SSR for URP has not been officially released.

Unity is aiming on shipping SSR for URP in Unity 6.7. You can try out the preview implementation in Unity 6.6.

Follow the instructions provided by Unity.

Additionally, set Visual Quality ‣ Mode to Opaque and Transparents. You may need to adjust smoothness/roughness on the water material and/or SSR volume to have it look acceptable.