Water Wave

Simulate a realistic water surface over any image — animated caustic light patterns, natural ripples, and refraction that make flat images feel like they're sitting under moving water. Works as a live animated filter or as a standalone animated texture.

Features

• Real caustic simulation — recursive fractal noise drives natural, non-repeating caustic light patterns

• Dual-layer distortion — combine primary caustics with a second distortion layer for extra depth

• Independent wave noise — add simplex-noise-based ripples separate from the caustic pattern

• Animated by default — fully time-based motion with adjustable speed, or freeze it as a static texture

• Edge-aware distortion — control how strongly the caustic effect bends near image edges

• Built in Paper style, running on a lightweight, zero-dependency shader engine for smooth performance

Controls

• Image

• Background Color

• Highlight Color

• Highlights

• Layering

• Edges

• Waves

• Caustic

• Size

• Speed

• Scale / Rotation / Offset

How to use

1. Add the Water component onto your canvas

2. Upload an image to distort, or leave it empty to use as a standalone animated water texture

3. Adjust Caustic and Layering to set how strong the light-refraction pattern looks

4. Add Waves for extra organic movement independent of the caustics

5. Set Speed to control animation pace, or set it to 0 to freeze on a single frame

Shader powered by Paper Shaders.