So it's been a while, but uni work came up so it took longer to finish than I'd hoped. So I've actually made something, huzzah. It's obviously not the best thing in the world but I learnt a lot to take forward which is the main thing. Who knows, it might be fun to redo this later on to test how much I've learnt and the improvements I've made.

It was actually tremendously fun to work on even if it is a bit basic. Well I mean it looks a bit basic, but it was more important for me to try and get If expressions and material transitions into my head. So it ended up being more about the transition than it did the overall effect.

So here's my material network, as you can see everythings all labelled correctly so no need for me to go through and explain. I also wanted to try out UV distortions with this as well. I'm not so sure it really gave me the effect I was after, it's actually barely noticeable in the final result and this was after it was to over the top at the start. I think I'll experiment again with it when I get round to having a go at a water shader or trying it with particles effects like some smoke or fire. 

As for the material transition, there were a few errors that needed fixing, but I thought it better to cut my losses and move on to something else or I'd be stuck on it forever. The two main problems were the texture for the transition and the gradient for the If expression. The texture itself has a weird circle on the top left corner that affects the transition but doesn't appear on the texture itself so I'd probably have to go back and redo it. And the transition gradient gave me problems as I was trying to get it to come from the sides to make it look as if it's loading in but I couldn't get this to work without having a thick border that was constantly on. But like I've said earlier, it's all a learning experience, so onwards and upwards.

And here's how it looks in action.