Authentic retro controls
Step waves, snap vertices, pixelate textures, distort UVs, reduce palettes, dither color, and band lighting deliberately.
All assets
PSX water with real systems underneath
Retro Water System for URP
Stylized water that does more than look wet.
Build lakes, rivers, pools, swamps, and bounded oceans with profile-driven retro rendering, CPU surface sampling, Rigidbody buoyancy, projected caustics, underwater effects, and tiled-ocean LOD.
URPBuoyancyCausticsOcean LOD
RenderingRetro-to-clean stylized water
PhysicsSurface-matched Rigidbody buoyancy
EnvironmentCaustics and underwater effects
ScaleBounded tiled oceans with LOD
What it solves
Stylized water that does more than look wet.
Retro Water System combines a hand-written URP water shader with the runtime systems that make water useful in a game. The same profile can drive appearance, CPU wave sampling, buoyancy, caustics, underwater effects, and optional ocean generation.
Push it toward crunchy PSX water with stepped animation, snapping, affine distortion, palette reduction, and dithering—or dial those effects back for cleaner low-poly and PS2-inspired results.
Core capabilities
A complete workflow, not a single trick.
The package connects authoring, runtime behavior, and the controls needed to integrate it into a real game.
Reusable water profiles
Drive the shader and supporting systems from one profile, then swap calm, stormy, polluted, or magical water at runtime.
Surface-matched buoyancy
Sample the same stepped wave field used by the shader so floating objects follow the water players can actually see.
Projected caustics
Project animated, depth-aware caustics onto opaque geometry beneath the surface through the included renderer feature.
Underwater camera effects
Detect the animated surface without trigger volumes and apply fog, tint, distortion, posterization, and dither below it.
Tiled ocean LOD
Generate bounded oceans with viewer-based mesh detail, far-wave reduction, crack-free borders, and distance limits.
The path through the tool
From first setup to production behavior.
The exact controls differ, but each STL Dynamics system is structured to get a first result quickly and leave enough depth for serious tuning.
Open Retro Water docsChoose the look
Start from a provided profile and tune surface mapping, waves, color bands, highlights, foam, and retro treatment.
Add the systems
Enable buoyancy, caustics, underwater effects, or ocean generation only where the scene needs them.
Diagnose and scale
Use the setup window to verify URP, repair renderer features, enable depth texture, and inspect the selected water surface.
Product showcase
Inside Retro Water.
Real editor workflows, runtime demos, feature breakdowns, and package presentation from the included media.
Watch it work
See the workflow in motion.
Open the official STL Dynamics videos on YouTube for the complete walkthrough and focused tutorials.
Documentation included
Go from first setup to the exact system you need.
3 focused documents are available in the STL Dynamics documentation hub for Retro Water System for URP.
More from STL Dynamics
Explore the rest of the lineup.
Audio Toolkit
Pooled Audio Event System
Define reusable SoundEvents, route playback through one managed pool, and keep large scenes under control with distance behavior, voice limits, loop virtualization, mixer routing, and runtime diagnostics.
2D + 3DPooling
Physics + Rigging
Reactive Bones
A complete bone-based secondary motion toolkit for hair, tails, ears, straps, cables, soft-body motion, plants, and accessories—with setup wizards, rig painting, smart collision, wind, runtime forces, optimization, and debugging.
Rig painterSmart collision
Character Rendering
Human Shaders for URP
A complete URP character material toolkit with specialized human shaders, one editor workspace, texture packing, reusable profiles, diagnostics, runtime controls, and painted or geometric skin visibility workflows.
URPSix shader families