GUIDE - Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial_ Easy Water System Walkthrough for Beginners

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Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial: Easy Water System
Walkthrough for Beginners (Island, River, Lake)
Quick Guide
If you ever wonder how to create islands, lakes, or rivers, this guide will help you.
This is a beginner-friendly tutorial and you should be able to follow it even if this
is your first tutorial about Unreal engine.
Learn more about Unreal on Youtube
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ezunreal
Creating Project
For our project, we will use third person template
1. Go games
2. Third person
3. Name it and create it
Layout Setup
Before we start make sure that we have the same interface layout
so you can easily follow this video
➔ Go window
https://www.youtube.com/@ezunreal
➔ Load Layout
Choose the default editor layout
This is a great option because if you mess something with your interface
For example, if you take your windows and arrange them in a weird way just use
the option to revert them back to the default
Enabling Plugins
Let’s move on
First things first, we need to enable some plugins to make this work
➔ Go edit
➔ Plugins
Over here type water
And enable the water plugin
Also, type landmass
And enable the landmass plugin
Make sure to restart the engine to use the plugins
After restarting your engine you might get this error
This is important because our water needs this water-body collision to work
So go right and click this add entry to the default engine
Don’t worry, it’s ok, it will just enable the collision for you so you don’t have to do
it manually
Creating Level
Let’s create a basic level
➔ Go file
➔ New Level
➔ Choose basic
Over here choose the floor in the outliner
And delete it
We don’t need it
Now go CTRL + SHIFT + S to save it
Otherwise, if unreal engine crashes you won't have your level
Creating Landscape
Let’s create our landscape first
Go landscape mode or hit SHIFT + 2
Over here make sure that this enable edit layers is selected
And make sure to make this location to be 0 0 0
I found that this 000 location is very important because it will make our ocean
easier to position later
Also, make the landscape relatively big
If you go 15 by 15 it will be too small and it won’t work correctly
When you are done hit create
Adding Ocean
➔ Go back to the selection tool with SHIFT + 1
➔ Click on the green add button
➔ Type in water
➔ Choose a water body ocean
Drag and drop it to the level
You can see that it’s not centered
Select a water body ocean
Make sure under transform options that everything is set to 0
Now we have our island and water properly aligned
Fixing Collision Error
If I click play from here and run into the water you can see that we have a
problem
We walk on water instead of walking through it
If you remember, this is because of the error from the beginning of the video
that says we have collision issues
This will prevent us from making objects float on the surface later
All we need to do is restart the engine
Make sure to save it before you close it
Open our map
And if I hit play you can see that everything works fine
Editing Island With Splines
To edit the shape of your island make sure to select water body ocean
Click on these small white rectangles
These are called spline points
Splines in Unreal Engine are important because they provide a flexible and efficient
way to define and control the paths, movements, and shapes of various objects and
elements within the game world
Splines are used in various aspects of game development, including creating dynamic
camera paths, defining character or object movement trajectories, designing road
networks, and shaping landscapes for more realistic and interactive game
environments
Now just move them around to change the shape of your island
You can also use handles to adjust the curve and further customize the shape
To add another spline point hold the alt key, click, and move
To delete just select it and hit the delete button
Removing Ring From Island
Just one tip
You can see this ring on our island
Sometimes it really gets in the way so to remove it select a water body ocean
Type falloff
Under mode change to width
And now our island is smooth
Changing the Waves
Ok, the next step is to change the properties of our waves
To do that select your water body ocean
Scroll down in the details panel
Over here expand the waves source
And water waves asset
Double click it
And we have our wave properties here
Under default, you can change the number of waves
Seed or randomness
Under wavelengths, you can choose min and max wavelength
My recommendation is to try overdo the maximum and minimum values to see
how it behaves
Use this technique whenever you see that you can change values somewhere
For example, go beyond amplitude and see the effect
Of course, you can change the water direction to your liking
Changing Water Color
One of the things you might want is to change the color of the water to fit your
level design
To do that select water body ocean
Scroll down to the rendering section
Over here double-click the water material
We have some options to choose from, but scroll down until you see the
absorption property
Change color here
Also, you can enable scattering
Scattering is like when light meets water and makes it look different
It can change how the water looks, like its color, how bright it is, and how clear you
can see through it
Also, this works for foam so use foam scattering to add subtle effects on top of your
water or combine multiple colors together
Creating River
Let’s create rivers now
It’s very easy because the procedure is very similar to creating an island and
ocean
➔ Go add
➔ And add water body river
You can see that you can move your river across the landscape
Also, you can add spline points by holding alt key and left mouse click
So, add spline points, move them, and create your perfect river
Changing Depth, Width, And Speed Of The River
Now we want to change the depth, width, and speed of the river
To do that make sure that water body river is selected in the outliner
Go here and select this middle button
This will select all splines of the river so we can edit them at the same time
If you want you can always edit them separately to add precise details
Here change the depth and width of the river
And with this velocity, you can change how fast the river is flowing
This is a great tool for creating different river speeds
For example, the river is fast at the beginning but it slows down when going into
the sea
Creating Floating Object
Our water system will be empty without floating objects
To create one just right-click in the content folder
Select blueprint class
And make sure its type is an actor
Name it
And double click to open it
First, we need an object that will float on the water
To add it go add
And select static mesh
On the right side change the static mesh to be a cube
And hit compile
To be able to simulate floating our cube must be a physics object
➔ So enable it
➔ And enable mass
➔ leave it at 100 kg
Now go add and type buoyancy
This component will add floating properties to our cube
Over here drag static mesh to be the default scene root
The last important thing is to go to buoyancy data on the right
Click this plus button next to pontoons
This will add pontoons to the cube
A pontoon is a part of a boat that helps it float on the water
It is like a big metal or rubber balloon that is filled with air
Some boats have two or three pontoons under them, and they are called pontoon
boats
In our case, we can’t see the pontoon, but as you can see on the location it’s in
the center of the cube because the location is 0 0 0
You can change pontoon size and location with options here like socket and
radius
If I hit play you can see that our cube floats perfectly
Conclusion
This is how you easily and quickly create your custom water system including
islands, oceans, rivers, and floating objects
I hopeyou learned something new and useful from this guide
If you like this tutorial feel free to check out my other tutorials about Unreal
Engine 5
Thanks for reading!
Learn more about Unreal on Youtube
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ezunreal
https://www.youtube.com/@ezunreal