Why are there almost zero PBR water(ocean, lakes, rivers) materials?

Jazon99

I want to know that, because I am searching multiple sites and basically 0. So I bother to do them from photos and them seamless tile them, but still,...  I don't want to do them in 1 software with tons of procedurals. I want it to be portable textures.

Eric Chadwick

Water is really simple as a basic PBR material. Glossy with IOR 1.333, dielectric fresnel, and refraction. 

The trouble is with refraction rendering, all kinds of different approaches possible, with different performance implications. 

Also, when any wind or physics gets involved, then you need simulation and volume rendering. 

In short, it’s too complex to be easily portable between renderers.

Eric Chadwick

If you’re interested, my sketchbook has some examples of textures for animated water, with breakdowns. It’s not PBR, but might help since it’s using tiled textures.

Neox

zero?

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/assets?count=20&keywords=water&sortBy=relevancy&sortDir=DESC&start=0&tag=38

i guess similar content exists for different engines

Fabi_G

I think generally it would help if you tried to explain in more detail what exactly you want achieve using what application/renderer, ideally with images/examples.

If your talking about game art, I would probably start by looking for sample/existing content for which ever engine you want to use, as linked by Neox, and then work with that or take a look how it's build.

I feel with such things, it often comes down to the question how far you want to go down a rabbit-hole creating things yourself, at the danger of losing focus or things looking less good, opposed to creating content/environments using existing building blocks. Not everyone has to be / can be a tech-artist.

Alex_J

i must have a dozen different pbr water shaders for unreal. Rivers, oceans, ponds... every type of water. All from different authors. 
as mentioned, of course you can transport the textures anywhere you want but the shader itself is always dependent on the language / engine.

Jazon99

Eric Chadwick said:

If you’re interested, my sketchbook has some examples of textures for animated water, with breakdowns. It’s not PBR, but might help since it’s using tiled textures.

Thx @Eric. I am interested.

I was looking at textures.com, Megascans,...
Now I see that Unreal store has a lot and I get more results if I search "water shader" and not Water PBR. I am mostly looking for what looks nice for terrains such as large scale mountain range, flowing rivers, emerald lakes, no animation needed for what I need.

ZacD

It's like asking why there's no good road PBR textures, water shaders have so many different requirements and needs and layers that no one size fits all solution is going to exist. Same with roads, terrain, grass, etc.