Improved Water with the Shorelines Beta

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#1

Update

Announcement

Hi Developers!

We are so hyped to launch the Shorelines Beta today! Shorelines is our upgrade to the way terrain water meets other terrain materials. With the Shorelines upgrade, water smoothly hugs the shores, its edges being unconstrained by voxel vertices and able to freely animate following the waves. :ocean::tada:

shorelines1before shorelines1after
Before & After

Shorelines work by allowing a terrain voxel to contain both water and another terrain material. An additional change you may notice while developing is that we extend the water surfaceā€™s geometry past the actual shore, to allow for a smooth connection. Shorelines bring major changes in our water implementation so please take time to read our warnings below.

Please note that if you are working in Team Create and you upgrade, everyone working on your place will see the Shorelines upgrade even if they donā€™t have the Beta enabled.

We highly recommend that you make a copy of your place before clicking ā€œupgradeā€ with the Shorelines Beta

How to upgrade

The Shorelines upgrade is applied per place. You have the freedom to decide whether youā€™d like to proceed with the Shorelines upgrade for each of your places independently.

  1. Please make a backup/copy of your place. The upgrade cannot be reverted after you save your place even if you disable the Beta (more details below).

  2. Enable the Shorelines Beta if itā€™s not enabled yet
    File > Beta Features > Upgrade Shorelines [Restart Studio as prompted]

  3. Open a place that you have previously backed up.

  4. Once your place opens up, a pop-up will ask if youā€™d like to upgrade Shorelines. Click ā€œUpgradeā€ if youā€™d like to proceed. You can dismiss the message if youā€™d like to upgrade at a later time.

  5. If you clicked ā€œUpgradeā€ youā€™re done! :partying_face:

  6. If you have clicked ā€œDismissā€ or if the popup isnā€™t showing for your place anymore, you can do the upgrade in Terrain Editor > ā€œCreateā€ tab > ā€œUpgrade Shorelinesā€ dropdown > ā€œUpgradeā€ button.

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Enjoy the Shorelines Upgrade! :ocean:

:warning: Warning #1: Edits post-upgrade are expected

Shorelines brings great visual improvement to water, but inherently, it changes the waterā€™s behavior when it meets with other terrain materials. This means proceeding with the upgrade might change your placeā€™s water bounds.

While most simple cases will be handled seamlessly, you might need to edit your terrain after the upgrade so that water lines up again with your original intention. Streams, waterfalls, non-horizontal water surfaces, and workarounds to the old water system are likely to require some edits. Please let us know if you face blockers or important pain points to achieve your intended look.

Tip: If you built workarounds to the old water system to get better looking shores, such as manually reshaping shorelines or inserting parts to hide the artifacts, you may get better results by removing the workarounds before upgrading.

:warning: Warning #2: You cannot revert the upgrade once itā€™s saved

After proceeding with the upgrade you will be able to undo it with the usual ā€œundoā€ commands (pasted image 0 (1), CTRL/āŒ˜ + Z). However, we donā€™t provide a revert functionality for Shorelines, and disabling the Beta will not roll back the upgrade. Once you have saved your place, you will only be able to revert the upgrade using your placeā€™s Version History. This is why we recommend that you make a backup of your place before trying Shorelines.

Why? We have considered providing a revert button. However, Shorelinesā€™ reverting functionality would have been non-deterministic. This means we would not have been able to guarantee youā€™d get the original state of your water back if you did terrain edits between the upgrade and reverting. To avoid confusion and frustrations, we chose not to offer the option. ā€œUndoā€ and the Version History guarantees you get your original terrain back.

:blue_heart: Made with love

Shorelines was achieved with the remarkable contributions of @Hyperhumanist, @ProtoValence, @wcai_rblx, @PixelMiner47, @RBLXImagineer, and @JoshSedai. Thanks for your help and support in making Shorelines! :clap:

Weā€™re super excited to hear your thoughts on Shorelines! Let us know about your experience and if you encounter any issues. :ocean::blue_heart:

Thank you!

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#2

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

#3

It would be super cool to have the foam effect in shorelines now, this will bump the realism to the next level!
image

329 Likes
#5

Another step towards creating more realistic terrain, thanks for this update!

54 Likes
#8

I hope this new feature wonā€™t get ā€œwatered downā€

102 Likes
#9

I audibly gasped when I saw the post. Iā€™m not joking, Iā€™m glad the day has finally come! Iā€™m still using part water right now, but further improvements to the terrain water like optimization, foam, waves actually affecting physics objects and customizable visual effects might make me use terrain water.

30 Likes
#10

Seeing the word ā€œwaterā€ in the announcements category is enough to make any developer scream. Finally, one of the ā€œone dayā€ features has been added!

34 Likes
#11

SO. MANY. YEARS. HAVE. I. BEEN. WAITING. FOR. THIS. DAY.

Thatā€™s all I need to say about this. cries tears of joy

Except a glaring issue as of right now is the terrain tears quite jarringly with new shorelines active in a place.
image

74 Likes
#12

Well, I for one am still waiting on a Water Material.

Terrain water is great and Iā€™m rooting for improvements, but the voxel system in itself is just too restrictive and slow for it to be used for anything else than an ocean.

Adding it as a material would open up many graphical possibilities.

73 Likes
#14

This is 5000 times better

W for Water

10 Likes
#15

This is amazing. :sweat_drops: :sweat_drops: The jagged edges are no more! :heart:

18 Likes
#16

Very Nice! Glad to see the engine is improving once again! Similar to the updates to the Shorelines, I would be very interested in seeing a way to edit control and customize shorelines one day, as well as even have ways to include Water Currents, Water Depth Effects (How clear the water is in certain areas) etc etc!

Really healthy change in my opinion, no more having to do tedious tricks in order to fix clamping issues!

13 Likes
#17

I hope this gets patched up soon and hopefully you have a back up for the game as well.

9 Likes
#18

This, or the ability to change textures on the shoreline and change the water texture.

10 Likes
#19

Will this work with water that is created at runtime such as with a terrain generator

6 Likes
#20

So does this mean we can have water with sharp edges without the weird beveling effect near the edges? Or is it just solely how water interacts with other terrain?

5 Likes
#21

This is having issues with water I am creating at runtime.

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Apparently I only parses terrain that already exists, as in the picture below
image

but not terrain, as in the first picture, doesnā€™t quite get the effect.

18 Likes
#22

This is such an amazing update for the Water Engine! Finally, we get some good updates in 2023.

9 Likes
#23

This looks awesome, canā€™t wait to use it, can you also add flowing lava?

6 Likes
#24

OGH it even smooths out the stairstepping problem I had here holy moley.

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So smoof

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70 Likes