Multiple Water Shaders in BGE

Game Engine Game Engine Resources
1

Hi! I am making this thread to slowely add some nice looking watershaders made in BGE one by one. They will be different: node setups, GLSL shaders, standart blender materials etc. But I will try to get best of best, compare their visual, framerate and finally give them my personal rating. They will all be easy accessible through here:)
All the tests are standalone player, windowed, 720p on NVIDIA GeForce GT 610, a low end GPU showing how theese waters act on low computers.

Rating = (how real(0-5) + how beautiful in my opinion(0-5) + FPS(0-5)) / 3.

[Shaders]

Martinsh Watersurface v1.1:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11542084/water_03.jpg
Martinsh Watersurface v1.1
Tests:
FPS: Original scene: [Average : ~60], [Minimum : ~57];
Appearance: Real time reflections and refraction, sunlight scattering, pretty fancy waves with customisable values. The realism is not 100% perfect, though, due to depth effects and reflection/refraction mixing incompletness. However, it is very good quality water;
Total Rating: (3.5 + 4 + 5) / 3 = 4.17;

Martinsh Water & Sky Shader v0.95:

https://youtu.be/zkdBGe8tfNw

Martinsh Water & Sky Shader v0.95
Tests:
FPS: Original Scene: [Average: ~28, Minimum: ~20];
Appearance: Looks very beautiful, real time reflections, refraction, depth effects, sun speculars and scattering, chromatic abberation, caustics etc. It is like a fresh, clean dream land water, blue, bright. It is tweakable enaugh.
Total Rating: (4 + 4.5 + 3) / 3 = 3.83;

Basic Water by Smoking_mirror:
/uploads/default/original/4X/6/9/2/6925f496026cddb459edd2e667b8af3e90c13f8d.jpgd=1439481540&thumb=1
Basic Water by Smoking_mirror
Tests:
FPS: Original Scene: [Average: ~60, Minimum: ~59];
Appearance: Looks fine for ocean, not suitable for smaller water posts. The reflection s are not real time, no refraction. VIsually still fancy.
Total Rating: (1 + 3.5 + 5) / 3 = 3.17;

Please, if you have a one nice shader that you want to share, post it down here?

2

After 1st three comparings I find out that martinsh water surface v1.1 is the best one for low end PCs out of the three, when comparing visuals and performance at once:)

3

[Shaders]
Martinsh Water and Sky Shader v0.99:

Martinsh Water and Sky Shader v0.99
Tests:
FPS: Original scene: [Average : ~18], [Minimum : ~15];
Appearance: The water looks brilliant, perfect colors, reflections, refraction. The lens distortion after climbing out of water. Underwater is amazing. Can’t image more perfect water, but if there will be one here, I’ll have to rate it 6 out of 5 in appearance section:D
Total Rating: (4.5 + 5 + 2) / 3 = 3.17;

Realistic Ocean Wave:
Realistic Ocean Wave
Tests:
FPS: Original scene: [Average : ~60], [Minimum : ~57];
Appearance: Water is displaced, has real time reflections and refraction. Foam is medium, FPS is brilliant. Looks fine for ocean, still would be better with foam to make a bit more rough(as it is ocean).
Total Rating: (4 + 3.5 + 5) / 2 = 4.17;

4

Please - someone should give more water shaders that I can performance-test on low end and rate basing on performance at exact appearance level. It can even be a solid plane with texture, but if it performs well, it will be high rated:)

5

Hi adriansnetlis,
your selection of water shader for GLSL are very good and important. It gives an overview of useable solutions for water animation. All shaders have high quality and give each game more realistic.
Good job. I like your presentation. :yes:
Peter

6

a question nabout smoking mirror´s water. what should i do to make it transparent ?

edit:
nvm i found it in the node editor

7

Yes - the way to make it transparent is in material pipeline settings enable Z-Transparency and innode editor set output’s aplha below 1. It is even possible to use fresnel there(e.g. import fresnel node from cycles).

@Peter Bluewin, thanks!