Beach Water Shader with Translucence?

Hi guys,

I’m currently working on a Beach scene.
Basicaly I try to do a realistic shader, but when I use the Translucent mat, it’s look reallly crappy :confused:

My problem is mostly based on the specular/reflection effect.
There is no cool shimmer, reflection or what ever. It’s look like the translucent fonction kill all the specular stuff :frowning:

I’m just using a blueprint daylight system. So, there is only 1 light (directionnal as a sun).

I found some post about Ocean, but nobody speak about the shore part and this is my problem.
I know there is a plugin called “VacOcean” (something like that).

So, my question is: Is there a way to get cool reflection/specular effect on a translucent material ?
It’s on my side ? Or it’s just UE4 can’t do it right now ?

I’m working on UE4 4.4.0.

Thanks :slight_smile:

Its UE 4 problem water/ ocean / translucent material is a joke.
Its totaly ignored by EPIC at this point, with no real estemate on the time line for a next gen implemetation.

Same goes for foliage.

Okay. Thanks.
Is there a way to fake a good specular/reflection with this translucent mat if I have a static light ?
Or I will have the same problem ?

Its UE 4 problem water/ ocean / translucent material is a joke. Its totaly ignored by EPIC at this point, with no real estemate on the time line for a next gen implemetation.

You need to relax. Epic have spoken about their plans for Ocean/Water support. Translucency in a deferred renderer is tricky business, Implementing a hybrid Forward/Deferred rendering environment that works well is no easy task. There are certainly good ways to fake specularity/reflections/etc to make nice looking water. Just take one look at Hourences Solus project. The water in that is very nice and shows what is currently possible.

Am relaxed mate :slight_smile: and yes its possible to some extent.
But lets be honest I was expecting stuff like this to be available.
When i got UE 4 8 months ago.

Its a"Next Gen" Engine for crying out laoud. :slight_smile:
And as far as i know its beeing “discused” internaly if that dont send chills down your back i dont know what will.

In the far future in a galaxy far, far away, is what am hearing form epic on these subjects.

Edit: Its actualy realy noticable the diference in responses/ replys we get on thos subjects.
In general Epic is epic at helping out and leting us know whats up.

But some important qustions gets almost completly ignored,

Thats my opinion atleast, you are intiteld to your own. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the link.

Btw, If I delete this “translucent mat” to work on a “Opaque mat”.
Can I do a realistic water shader ?

If you have a static light, you can feed the light direction into the shader directly, as a parameter (the built-in skysphere materials do this). From there, you can do the lighting calculation in the material itself, feeding the specular result to the emissive channel. For simplicity’s sake, I recommend trying a Phong specular highlight: Phong reflection model - Wikipedia

The equation you need is:

k(R.V)^a I

Where k is the specular component of the material, R is the direction of a perfectly reflected ray of light (there is a built in function than can help with calculating this from your light direction), V is the camera direction inverted (direction from the surface to the camera), a is the specular power (higher values give a sharper specular result) and I is the light colour multiplied by the light intensity. This gives you the Phong specular component, which should give you reasonable specular highlights for a single light source.

Thanks I will try this and wait EPIC will launch an update.