Tasty Town Ocean Shader

JamCity / SGN (2016)

This customized water shader was created in Unity using Shader Forge.

I wanted to try out some new techniques to improve the ocean visuals of the Tasty Town playable area. Previous versions of water used modeled meshes that matched the pier to water intersection to convey the foam layer as well as multiple water mesh surfaces to depict water depth. I wanted to create a custom shader that could do all that automatically so as we iterate on the layout, we would not have to recreate and tweak all the meshes associated with the game's ocean.

In the new shader, I used depth blending technique in Shader Forge to figure out how close to the surface an area is or if an object is submerged in the water. This also allowed the shader to render the water foam texture around the edges of objects intersecting the water object. Simple vertex animation animated the waves while color tinting was used in conjuncture to depth to color different parts of the water. Finally I used a fresnel effect on the water surface to give it some specular shine based off of the view angle.