Hi @Excess, I just stumbled on this thread while trying to figure out how get the depth buffer and realizing my toon water tutorial doesn’t work with the latest PlayCanvas editor anymore. It sounds like you and Leonidas have found a number of issues here! If you have a forked version that’s updated with some of these fixes for the depth map I’d appreciate a link here so I can update the source version.
The engine-only source code is in this repo and I welcome any PRs there too: https://github.com/OmarShehata/tutsplus-toon-water.
It sounds like perhaps this is thread is a good reference on the latest correct way of obtaining the depth buffer: Accessing Depth Buffer of a Render Target?