I went back and improve the water materials in both outdoor environments to hide the clipping. I took inspiration from Cloward (2021), Smart Poly (2020) and the official Unreal documentation for water physics (Epic Games, Inc, 2023b). Starting with the tundra river, I changed the refraction and absorption to match the theming more.
With the island environment however, it was quite different to the relaxed flow of the tundra river. I improved the ocean’s style and changed how it behaves. I also added foam to the ocean for some detailing too.
I have tried to create a Gerstner simulation and reduce the steepness (Epic Games, Inc, 2023a; WanderingDino, 2021), but then I found out that you had to modify the ocean material blueprint itself. In the end, I have increased the tiling on the ocean so that I couldn’t see the clipping occurring.
After everything was finished, I went back and implement the cel-shading style to the island environment (Aspland, 2022). This was the material setup to get the style to work perfectly.
And by applying it to a post process volume, I was able to infinitely select the whole boundary of the map in this cel-shading look.
To finish off the tundra landscape, I have added some atmospheric fog compliment the theming well.
References:
Aspland, M. (2022) How To Create Cel-Shading In Unreal Engine 4/5 (Tutorial) [Video] Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZH4jCO4ZM&t=565s [Accessed 5th April 2023]
Cloward, B. (2021) Water Polish for 4.26 Water System – Building Worlds In Unreal – Episode 25 [Video] Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbAzQZ2waOI [Accessed 23rd February 2023]
Epic Games, Inc (2023a) Simulating Waves Using The Water Waves Asset. https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/BuildingWorlds/Water/WaterWaveAsset/ [Accessed 5th April 2023]
Epic Games, Inc (2023b) Water System. Available online: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/water-system-in-unreal-engine/ [Accessed 7th March 2023]
Smart Poly (2020) Unreal Engine 4.26 Water Tutorial [Video] Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE9jZbhI3Xg [Accessed 7th March 2023]
WanderingDino (2021) Water body’s ocean waves are glitching. Unreal Engine Forums. June 21. Available online: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/water-bodys-ocean-waves-are-glitching/484325 [Accessed 5th April 2023]