I’ve been working on a shader for EDNA which is applied to a dynamic water plane in the background.
Using the interactive water object developed by a colleague I’ve mapped some basic perlin noise in 3D world space, and have isolated certain values to create a colour mask for the water.
This method allows for a pretty dramatic range of effects (the final in-game one is significantly more subtle); and the noise can be panned slowly to create an effect kind of like a lava lamp.
The shader is really only designer to be viewed from top-down, but from the side you can see the effect of the ripples much more clearly.
Also, by using 3D noise instead of regular old 2D noise you get a very cool effect when the water is rippling as the surface is sampling from different depths. Rather than constantly changing, the surface will “spring” back to a similar state to before it was interacted with. This makes it feel quite tangible and makes it a lot of fun to play with!