Thread by @lunoland

This waterfall is a combination of sprites, shaders, and no less than 13 particle systems! Dare I say it, the most advanced pixel art waterfall...ever?

I spent a crazy amount of time making this, so here's a thread (RTs appreciated).

#madewithunity #gamedev #screenshotsaturday

1/4 Lighting💡

Mostly accomplished via a fragment shader that draws a radial gradient with overlay blending using grab pass.

Standard-issue god ray sprites using overlay emphasize direct sunlight from above. The other lights have a teal hue to fake bounce from the water.

2/4 Shader

First, a gradient at the bottom. Then some wiggle by animating a uv offset quantized to texels. Offset direction changes every other pixel column:
floor(i.uv.x * _MainTex_TexelSize.z) % 2 * 2 - 1

Lower the waterfall's alpha to complete the distorted/watery vibe 🌊

3/4 Shader cont.

Streams are added with the same UV tricks as the wiggle, but fancier. I had tons of params like speed, size, color, etc. so I could experiment and tweak things just right 👌

The curve is the interesting bit and it's just texelDistanceFromCenter^2 * curveAmount

4/4 Particles

As they appear in the GIF (from top to bottom), I added particles for:
- sunlight reflections on top
- water splashes on rocks
- sunlight on edges
- 4 fixed position streams in falls
- long streams randomly in falls
- spray at the bottom
(also, wobbly mist sprites)

That's it! For all the extra details that can't fit in 280 chars, check the full post on my devlog: forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topi…

You can also signup for the Year In The Trees newsletter, which will get you early alpha access (forthcoming), at yearinthetrees.com ✌️😁