The goal of this project was to create a custom shader. I chose to focus on learning how to make different types of shaders and explore how they can be used in a scene. I worked in Unreal Engine 5 and experimented with its material editor and tools.

My main shaders were:
* Water Shader: A shader that creates a realistic water effect with reflections and movement and also the deeper something is, the darker the color gets. The material has adjustable settings to control how light behaves in the water. You can tweak how much light is absorbed (making the water look darker or clearer) and how much it scatters (which softens shadows and gives a more natural feel). Everything is easy to adjust through the material instance.

* Waterfall Shader: Niagara System
Below is a screenshot showing how I created the waterfall. Due to the limited time I had for the project, I had to cheat a bit with the “physics” — for example, the splash comes from a smoke particle system and doesn't actually interact with the water. The water system itself was made using two different particle systems: one with a Sprite Renderer and one with both Sprite Renderer and Ribbon Rendering.

* Plant Shader: A shader that gives plants gentle movement to simulate wind and make the scene feel more alive. I started in Blender by vertex painting — using white for areas that should stay still, and gradually blending to black where I wanted the most movement. In Unreal Engine 5, I used the World Position Offset with parameters connected to Simple Grass Wind, allowing control over speed, weight, and intensity through the material instance.

This project helped me understand how shaders work in Unreal Engine 5 and how they can be combined with particle systems and animations to create more dynamic environments.