Tidal – Realistic GPU Water URP (Oceans, Lakes, Ponds)

📘 Documentation 🕹️ Compatibility 💬 Support (support@eugatnomstudios.com)

A license for this asset guarantees access to updates for Unity 2022-2023 & Unity 6.0–6.3 and future improvements within the Tidal product line.

What is Tidal?

Tidal is a GPU-accelerated water system for Unity URP, built around FFT-based wave simulation, clipmapped ocean meshes, and modular subsystems. It is designed for oceans, lakes, pools, and large-scale water bodies, with a strong focus on performance, flexibility, and editor tooling.

Tidal is intended for developers who want real control over wave behavior, performance scaling, and runtime interaction, rather than a one-size-fits-all water shader.

🌊 Highlights

• FFT-based multi-cascade wave simulation (GPU compute)
• Profile-driven wave behavior (wind, fetch, swell, direction)
• Infinite oceans and bounded lakes
• GPU height readback for buoyancy & gameplay
• Optional planar reflections
• Underwater rendering & depth fog
• Zone-based damping and transitions
• Extensive editor tooling and validation

🏄 Quick Overview

Tidal separates simulation, rendering, and interaction into clear components:

• TidalCompute - FFT wave simulation (can be shared across bodies)
• TidalBody - Rendering, mesh LODs, subsystems
• TidalSurface Material - Visual appearance
• TidalProfile - FFT water settings (as Scriptable Object)
• Zones & Volumes - Damping, masking, clipping, and interaction control

This modular design allows multiple water bodies to share a single simulation for excellent performance scalability.

💧 Rendering & Visual Features

• FFT-based displacement with 3 cascades
• Shoreline & surface foam
• Subsurface scattering
• Environment reflections
• Optional planar reflections
• Underwater fog & lighting sync
• Orthographic camera support
• Day/night & emissive reflection support

📦 Demo scenes/content

• Extreme wave / tsunami scene
• Large-scale oceans and island scene
• Indoor & confined water scene
• Multi-body scene
• Orthographic camera scene
• Performance-focused configuration scene
• Example profiles & materials
• Editor validation and setup helpers

✔️ Platform Support

Fully Supported:

• Windows (DX11 / DX12) - Primary development and tested platform

May Work: (Untested / Limited)

• macOS
• iOS / Android
• Consoles
• VR

Not Supported:

• WebGL - Compute shaders required

⚡ Performance

Tidal is designed to scale:

• Share one simulation across many bodies
• Reduce FFT resolution
• Lower simulation update rate
• Disable planar reflections or underwater rendering
• Adjust mesh LOD density

From calm lakes to massive oceans, performance is always under your control.

📘 Documentation

Full setup guides, inspector references, performance tips, and demos:

https://eugatnomstudios.com/tidal/doc/

Third-Party Content

This asset includes third-party components licensed under permissive open licenses:

• Assets from Poly Haven and AmbientCG, licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal
• 3D models by Kenney, licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal
• Code and mathematical techniques derived from FFT-Ocean by Ivan Pensionerov, licensed under the MIT License

Promotional Media Notice:

Some promotional screenshots on the Asset Store page use a skybox from the Fantasy Skybox FREE package by Render Knight. This skybox is used for visual presentation only in screenshots and is not included, redistributed, or required for use of this asset. Permission for this usage has been granted by the asset author.

See the included Third-Party Notices.txt file in the package for full license details.