Technical Artist Adrian Caminero Navarro recently shared a water shader study built in Unreal Engine around Single Layer Water.
The goal was to explore ways to make the water react better to its surroundings, focusing on shoreline behavior, contact foam, and collision-based refraction.
Adrian starts by building the surface motion. The shader uses two layers of normals: a larger wave pattern for the overall movement of the water, and a smaller detail normal to break up the surface and avoid a flat look.
A very important part of the setup, as the author explains, is DistanceToNearestSurface, which allows the shader to detect nearby geometry like the shoreline or objects intersecting the water. That same information is reused across multiple effects to keep everything consistent.
For foam, it defines where it appears along the edges, and the result is animated using erosion and foam textures. For refraction, the same mask is used to distort the surface, creating localized distortion near contact areas.
Adrian also pointed out that part of the setup involves controlling how light behaves inside the water.
The material includes parameters like scattering, absorption, turbidity, and color, which help define how clear or dense the water appears depending on the environment.
To push the look a little further, the shader adds animated caustics, mainly in shallow areas. These are adjusted through contrast and distortion, and are driven by the surface motion so they stay consistent with the rest of the water.
Another key part, as Adrian explains, is how everything is exposed in the Material Instance.
Most of the important parameters, including foam, refraction, surface motion, caustics, and overall appearance, can be adjusted directly without touching the shader graph, which makes iteration much faster.
One last thing Adrian wanted to highlight is that this breakdown comes from just a case study, not a final solution. If he continues working on it, the next step would likely be pushing directional waves and more complex shoreline behavior.
If you found this useful or want to see more of Adrian’s work, you can find his links below.
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