Crest is a trusted water solution by many studios for its quality and performance. It has been implemented in several successful games & simulators and the subject of SIGGRAPH talks.
For more details this asset from the Unity Asset Store: Click Here
This is a paid asset, but now you can download the “Crest Water 4 BIRP (Ocean, Rivers & Lakes)” for FREE. Please keep in mind that this package is provided only for learning purposes or to test before buying the product, NOT FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES.
Crest Water 4 BIRP (Ocean, Rivers & Lakes) v4.22.1 (16 Apr 2025) (Latest version)
Crest Water 4 BIRP (Ocean, Rivers & Lakes) v4.22.0 (08 Apr 2025)
Crest Water 4 BIRP (Ocean, Rivers & Lakes) v4.21.4 (15 Jan 2025)
“If possible, please buy the package to support the developer”
Description
Documentation • Email • GitHub • Discord • Twitter • YouTube
Crest is a trusted water solution by many studios for its quality and performance. It has been implemented in several successful games & simulators and the subject of SIGGRAPH talks.
Crest 5 is now available. Crest 4 will still continue to be supported with bug fixes and minor improvements.
Workflow
Add water in minutes with three components (water surface, underwater and waves)
Sane and balanced defaults
Several example scenes covering many use cases
Detailed help boxes display validation errors direct in the inspector with fix buttons to guide setup
Online documentation with embedded videos
Features
Unity 6 ready
State-of-the-art LOD system achieving class-leading performance
Innovative “equalizer” style wave authoring. Both FFT and Gerstner waves supported
Input system for modifying ocean data (like foam) using mesh, trail, line and particle renderers
Innovative “wave spline” technology to give detailed control over water simulation including rivers, lakes and shorelines
Simulated light transport including reflection, refraction, scattering, caustics approximation and shadowing
Underwater effect with partial submersion and meniscus
Query water displacement using GPU or CPU
Unity Server support suitable for authoritative servers (like MMOs)
Shifting Origin component provided for large/open worlds
Dynamic wave simulation (“ripple simulation”) for dynamic object-water interaction including boat wakes
Shallow water – light scattering and wave attenuation
Foam simulated from waves and shorelines
Apply colour onto ocean surface similar to decals
Water volumes which can restrict rendering of both surface and underwater to a given geometry (eg sphere of water)
Flow to enable horizontal motion of water surface
Physics interface with buoyancy implementations and support for Dynamic Water Physics 2
Flexible time synchronisation to support networking and cutscene Timelines
Surface clipping to carve hulls/caves out of water surface
Planar reflections
Deferred, Forward, Perspective, Orthographic and Stereo (VR/XR) rendering supported
Much more…
To see some of these features in action, videos can be found on our YouTube channel. Furthermore, we have a Frequently Ask Questions section in our documentation.
Crest does not support OpenGL or WebGL.
Asset Compatibility
We avoid non-standard techniques and are not aware of any major incompatibilities. Our users also use Dynamic Water Physics 2, Enviro, Gaia, Microsplat, Nature Manufacture, Azure[Sky], Skybox Creator, Weather Maker, Vegetation Studio, and many more…
Open Source
This asset is freely available on GitHub. The benefit of purchasing Crest is being able to download it from the Unity Asset Store rather than the more involved process of using GitHub. Additionally, purchasing funds further development and allows us to provide developer support.
Technical details
Crest is built to be powerful, flexible and scalable which may not be suitable for low-end mobile devices. Several studios have successfully launched using Crest on Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox.
Crest does not support OpenGL or WebGL and requires shader compilation target 4.5 or above.
Crest has limited support for rendering multiple cameras simultaneously, as would be required by split screen multiplayer for example, as the LOD detail is centered around one position (normally the main camera).
The Crest code contains MIT-licensed code. The copyright notices are specified in the included file ThirdPartyNotices.md.
