River Modeler v1.0.5 is a procedural tool that generates river geometry along a spline and automatically spawns visual and audio effects. Designed for ease of use and powerful functionality, it allows developers and environment artists to transform splines into complete river systems directly within the Unity Editor. Built on Unity's native Spline Tools package, the tool integrates seamlessly with existing workflows and has been refined through multiple production deployments. It supports intelligent mesh generation based on curvature and slope, including edge loops, layered displacement, foam vertex coloring, and full UV control. The tool also supports multiple splines within a container and automatically exports FBX files.
Scene-view tools enable precise control over river properties such as transparency, displacement, and foam scale. These settings are stored in configurable vertex color channels and are compatible with water shaders that support this data, including the demo shader and Stylized Water 3.
The tool includes effect-focused components: a VFX Emitter that drives foam splashes and small waterfalls based on terrain conditions, and an Audio Zone that spawns emitters along the river to deliver natural soundscapes with dynamic volume attenuation based on camera distance. Note that water splashes are only supported in URP and require a specific render pipeline.
Technical features include a C# API for custom integration, callback events accessible via script or inspector, and a visual debugger to inspect generated geometry, foam, and transparency weights.
The package includes a premade river shader (graph), two original audio loops (cascade and fast flowing creek), a foam texture, a wave normal map, and a water splash particle texture. While the shader is designed to demonstrate the tool’s capabilities and supports all render pipelines, it is basic and may not suit advanced use cases like VR or orthographic views. The tool's focus remains on the procedural generation system, with shader development limited to supporting new modeling features. For full water simulation, Stylized Water 3 is recommended.
River Modeler also integrates with MicroVerse, allowing rivers to be carved naturally into terrain using MicroVerse’s terrain authoring workflow. This integration can drive a Spline Path component to create river banks and beds. Both the MicroVerse asset and its Splines module must be installed for this functionality.
2026-02-25 00:00:00-update version:River Modeler v1.0.5
