Water Rendering in Far Cry 5

Explore the innovative water rendering system developed for Far Cry 5 in this 49-minute GDC session from 2018. Dive into the technical details as AMD's Cristian Cutocheras and Ubisoft's Branislav Grujic reveal the all-new water system that enables artists to create realistic water-based physical features like waterfalls and lakes. Learn about the engine, tools, and rendering techniques used, including material structure buffers, tessellation, normal mapping, smoothness, foam generation, and flow mapping. Discover how the team tackled challenges such as material blending in half precision, minimum precision basics, and register pressure optimization. Gain insights into performance improvements and problem-solving approaches used in the development process.