Waterways
A Godot Engine add-on for generating river meshes with flow and foam maps using bezier curves.
What is Waterways?
Waterways is a Godot Engine add-on that generates river meshes with accompanying flow and foam maps using bezier curves. It solves the problem of creating realistic flowing water bodies in games without relying on external tools or manual texture painting. The tool provides an integrated editor workflow for shaping rivers, baking textures, and applying shader effects.
Godot game developers and environment artists who need to create realistic rivers and water bodies with dynamic visual effects like flow and foam in their 3D projects.
Developers choose Waterways because it offers a fully integrated, editor-native solution for river creation with advanced features like flow map baking, buoyancy physics, and custom shader support, all without leaving the Godot environment.
Overview
A tool to generate river meshes with flow and foam maps based on bezier curves.
Use Cases
Best For
- Creating procedurally generated rivers in Godot games
- Adding dynamic water flow and foam effects to 3D environments
- Implementing buoyancy physics for objects floating on water
- Developing custom water shaders with integrated editor controls
- Prototyping water bodies quickly with bezier curve editing
- Generating flow maps for water simulation without external tools
Not Ideal For
- Games requiring large ocean or lake water bodies, as it only supports rivers
- Projects needing real-time reflections on water without custom shader work, due to Godot's SSR limitations
- Environments where dynamic mesh displacement for waves is essential, since Godot lacks tessellation support
Pros & Cons
Pros
Provides in-editor gizmos with axis/plane constraints and snap-to-collider functionality, allowing direct river shaping in Godot similar to Blender, as shown in the GIFs for intuitive control.
Generates flow and foam maps procedurally based on river geometry, eliminating manual texture painting and enabling dynamic visual effects without external tools, detailed in the baking section with configurable parameters.
Parses uniforms from custom shaders and integrates them into the inspector with subcategories, making it easy to tweak shader properties directly in Godot, as explained in the 'Writing Custom Shaders' section.
Adds floating behavior to RigidBody nodes using WaterSystem height and flow data, enabling realistic object interactions with configurable forces and resistance, demonstrated in the Buoyant node parameters.
Cons
Only supports river generation with no solution for lakes or oceans, as explicitly admitted in the 'Current Limitations' section, restricting its use for broader water simulation needs.
Lacks real-time reflections for water surfaces because Godot's SSR doesn't work with transparent objects, and the add-on has not implemented an alternative, requiring custom shader work for reflective effects.
Custom shaders must adhere to specific naming conventions (e.g., prefixes like 'i_' for internal uniforms) and types, which can be restrictive and error-prone, as detailed in the shader writing guidelines.
Frequently Asked Questions
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