This impressive foamy beach water shader was created with Valve’s 2004 Source by Game Developer Jasper Carmack, who decided to experiment with the engine and demonstrate how high-quality photo textures, combined with clever shader techniques, can still deliver impressive results.
While Source was updated several times, it featured a powerful material proxy system from the start. Jasper Carmack explained that it’s all stock shaders and revealed that he tried a more complex version (left), which lacked support for base textures and specular mapping, which the cheap has (right). “I really love the idea of ‘getting the most out of the least’ where I can”, commented the developer.
Jasper Carmack
This water uses two normal maps that scroll, along with a foamy base texture and an alpha map mask. The sines control the movement of the textures, allowing them to speed up or slow down while also swaying them left to right as they move to create a more natural, less repetitive look.
Jasper Carmack also shared plans for a future tutorial and showcased how the water effect looks in action:
You can wishlist AMYGDALA, the game for which this shader was developed, and explore more of Jasper Carmack’s Source works on his X/Twitter page:
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