Real-Time Beach Waves Simulations in Unreal Engine 5.3

VFX Artist and Founder/Instructor at RedefineFX Jesse Pitela, who last month presented a realistic-looking UE5-powered spaceship booster fire effect, has recently shared a couple of incredible water simulations created in Unreal Engine 5.3 with Niagara Fluids.

For those unfamiliar, Niagara Fluids is a useful plug-in for UE5 that brings real-time fluid effects to the engine. With Niagara Fluids, you get access to standard fluids templates that help you get started with effects like fire, smoke, gas, and more. The plug-in adds both 2D templates, optimized for games, and 3D templates, designed primarily to be used in cinematics.

The fluid simulations offered by Niagara Fluids deliver natural and lifelike results, surpassing the simplicity of particle-based setups. These fluid simulations are seamlessly integrated with the Niagara infrastructure. Advanced users can customize them without the need for coding, plug-ins, or data interfaces.

Leveraging the plug-in, the artist has set up a couple of high-quality real-time sims, complete with realistic splashes and whitewater particles. According to Jesse, the simulations were captured from the viewport and run on a computer with GeForce RTX 4090 GPU and AMD Ryzen 3990X CPU.

The simulations were created as part of the upcoming beginner-friendly course dedicated to creating real-time, high-quality volumetric simulations to be used in AAA cinematics.

With this course, you'll learn both the fundamental concepts and advanced techniques of creating 3D sims, study Niagara Fluids from the ground up, and acquire a useful skillset that will help you land a job as a VFX Artist. At the moment of writing this, the enrollment ends in a little over 4 days. You can learn more and enroll by clicking this link.

Earlier, Jesse also shared a free Niagara Fluids course, explaining how to create volumetric smoke and fire simulations in Unreal Engine 5. The tutorial includes four complete FX setups and is suitable for beginners.

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