Waterfall VFX Breakdown

Fishing Guild
Feb 25, 2023
2 min read

*Mild Flash Warning*

The first step to breaking down an effect is to see what real-life versions (if applicable) are available to observe and understand.

Waterfalls, at the most basic of understanding, have three parts: The water tube itself, the panning whitewater caustic effect along the tube, and the ripple effect coming from the base of the tube.

There are, of course, a few more pieces that can be easily overlooked, such as the water vapor plume where the water tube meets the water plane, dramatic white water just at the top of the tube to define its shape and speed more, water droplets around the base, and additional movement lines and other VFX spice enhancing methods.

With this in mind, I started by modeling the 4 models I would need for this to work.

The Water Tube Mesh (Water Tube)
Duplicating The Front+Side Facing Faces of the Water Tube (Panning Caustic)
Duplicating Only The Upper Top Facing Faces of the Water Tube (Additional Movement Lines)
The Waterfall’s Bottom Plane (Panning Ripple) (We will use multiple of this model)

Then I started making various materials to accomplish my needs. Most of these are simple panning textures from the central point outwards.

Here’s my shader graph for panning a texture from the center point of a plane-like mesh. I used a ditherTemporalAA node at the end to get a faded effect on the edges of the fade.

By placing these onto our outer meshes, and transforming or stretching them to fit our needs, we can begin building our waterfall’s outer skin.

Whatever water shader one uses, just make sure that the caustic is panning downwards on the mesh, so that it emulates the flowing of water. A fresnel function is recommended in the water material to achieve a variety in color from the sides to the center of the mesh.