Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
I started developing this realistic dolphin training game using Unity 6000 (HDRP). I've been working on the idea for only a few days , I tried to use simple assets and models , but the lighting and ambient occlusion in HDRP makes the scene look way more detailed. All realtime lighting, the dolphin shader uses real sub surface scattering on the skin. And volumetric fog that makes gives the warehouse scene depth . real sun glare can be seen through the skylights , and shimmers when under water , working on this game has given me a entirely new respect for dolphins and aquatic life :)
I created the environment from some free models, but I modeled the pool. And wrote a custom dolphin controller script, , over 1200 lines of code to apply physics forces and blend all the fine details using mouse inputs and WASD and Shift... there is a IK solvers used for the body/spine curling that moves the fluke, I used a AnimatorController and blendtree for moving the IK targets around, this made the controller very simple to code and gave a decent appearance , attention was given to both under-water and above-water (jump) modes,
There is a aerodynamic effect when the dolphin enters the water , the same forces are applied in air too but when the body is below the watersurface the aerodynamic force ramps up the alignment , it took a lot of time to get all of the effects working together , notice the fluke oscillation whenever the player is maneuvering - that's the automatic sympathetic (or programmed-in) motion using a sin function and 2nd derivatives of the mouse axis.
The water system used was Crest 5 , I had to write my own buoyancy scripts for the dolphin , but I chose Crest because of the water interaction looks amazing in realtime!
The vocalizations and echolocation are user-controlled , might write a custom echolocation shader to actually visualize the pings as maybe a edge highlighter for murky water environments!
I am still working on this, I started this project only a week ago, but I'd like to continue and try to build a playable game that's fun, maybe with a simulation mode , this is my first actual game , however right now I'm trying to learn how to build physics simulations in C# using Unity for the photo-realistic HDRP pipeline, this is my way of "learning the art" of writing custom IK models and implementing barebones gate-planners to animate custom characters and future projects! Hope you enjoyed the video. This was so much fun to create!
I started developing this realistic dolphin training game using Unity 6000 (HDRP). I've been working on the idea for only a few days , I tried to use simple assets and models , but the lighting and ambient occlusion in HDRP makes the scene look way more detailed. All realtime lighting, the dolphin shader uses real sub surface scattering on the skin. And volumetric fog that makes gives the warehouse scene depth . real sun glare can be seen through the skylights , and shimmers when under water , working on this game has given me a entirely new respect for dolphins and aquatic life :)
I created the environment from some free models, but I modeled the pool. And wrote a custom dolphin controller script, , over 1200 lines of code to apply physics forces and blend all the fine details using mouse inputs and WASD and Shift... there is a IK solvers used for the body/spine curling that moves the fluke, I used a AnimatorController and blendtree for moving the IK targets around, this made the controller very simple to code and gave a decent appearance , attention was given to both under-water and above-water (jump) modes,
There is a aerodynamic effect when the dolphin enters the water , the same forces are applied in air too but when the body is below the watersurface the aerodynamic force ramps up the alignment , it took a lot of time to get all of the effects working together , notice the fluke oscillation whenever the player is maneuvering - that's the automatic sympathetic (or programmed-in) motion using a sin function and 2nd derivatives of the mouse axis.
The water system used was Crest 5 , I had to write my own buoyancy scripts for the dolphin , but I chose Crest because of the water interaction looks amazing in realtime!
The vocalizations and echolocation are user-controlled , might write a custom echolocation shader to actually visualize the pings as maybe a edge highlighter for murky water environments!
I am still working on this, I started this project only a week ago, but I'd like to continue and try to build a playable game that's fun, maybe with a simulation mode , this is my first actual game , however right now I'm trying to learn how to build physics simulations in C# using Unity for the photo-realistic HDRP pipeline, this is my way of "learning the art" of writing custom IK models and implementing barebones gate-planners to animate custom characters and future projects! Hope you enjoyed the video. This was so much fun to create!
