vfx-water-ripple

Attach the WaterRippleSurface controller to a MeshInstance3D with a subdivided PlaneMesh, then call add_ripple(global_position, 0.5) from your character's footstep callback. Use contains_point() to check the player is over the water surface first.

Spawn ripples from a Rain node by calling add_ripple at random positions inside the puddle bounds with low amplitude around 0.2. Throttle to roughly 5 ripples per second so the fixed 16-slot shader buffer is not flooded.

Godot's shader TIME wraps at rendering/limits/time/time_rollover_secs (3600 seconds by default), sending ripple ages negative. Drive ripple timing from your own accumulated clock pushed as a uniform every frame instead of comparing against TIME.

No, this shader assumes a flat water plane. For wavy water, sample the wave height in the same shader and add ripple displacement on top, or use a dedicated ocean-water recipe for large-scale waves.

The shader holds a fixed maximum of 16 simultaneous ripples; older entries are overwritten when full. Raise MAX_RIPPLES in both the GLSL constant and GDScript together, or throttle spawn rates for heavy rain.

The engine decodes NORMAL_MAP again with normal_map.xy * 2.0 - 1.0, so writing an already-decoded ±1 vector causes permanent maximum tilt. Re-encode the normal with * 0.5 + 0.5 before assigning, as the shader does.