Andras Ketzer releases FluidNinja Live 2 for Unreal Engine

The playable demo for FluidNinja Live 2, the new version of the popular Unreal Engine visual effects system, running on a mid-range Windows PC with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU.

Developer Andras Ketzer has released FluidNinja Live 2, the long-awaited major update to his modular visual effects system for Unreal Engine.

Used in both major games and for offline content like cinematics, FluidNinja Live makes it possible to create a range of effects, including water, fire, smoke, clouds, sand and snow.

The update completely rearchitects the software, improving performance, reducing the learning curve, and introducing new ways to control simulations and to align them to terrain.

A popular tool for building large-scale, high-performance Unreal Engine VFX set-ups
First released in 2020, FluidNinja Live provides tools for building large-scale effects in Unreal Engine, including liquids, gaseous fluids, granular fluids and volumetrics.

Technically speaking, it’s a ‘project’ rather than a plugin, wrapping Niagara, Unreal Engine’s native VFX system, in a set of Blueprints.

Simulations can be controlled using a range of data sources, including textures – both bitmaps and Runtime Virtual Textures – landscapes, splines and bones.

There are also a number of workflows to keep large simulations performant, including using a 2D sim to drive 3D visualization, and attaching a simulation to the player.

The software has been used in major games including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dune: Awakening, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and in cinematics for Fortnite.

FluidNinja 2: faster, easier to master, and more controllable
FluidNinja Live 2 (strictly speaking, it’s styled ‘LIVE-2’) is a major – and long-awaited – update, having been in development for three years.

It’s a “new piece of software – not a modified version of Live 1”, moving most of the Blueprint functions from the CPU to the GPU, and fluid simulation to Niagara Simulation Stages.

As well as improving performance, Ketzer says the changes should smooth FluidNinja’s learning curve – the software’s listing on Fab warns that it is “not a drag-and-drop tool”.

When using external renderers, there are new options for aligning simulations with surfaces, eliminating the “tedious water meshing and RVT-based landscape alignment workflow” of Live 1.

Other improvements include the option to save the complete FluidNinja state to a single preset, and support for new inputs, including particles, Mesh Distance Fields, and Chaos destructibles.

Currently only deploys to Windows, not consoles or mobile
However, whereas Live 1 – still available to buy – supports a range of platforms, including consoles, Linux, Android and iOS, the only platform currently supported in Live 2 is Windows.

According to the release notes, more hardware types will be added in future updates.

Price and system requirements
FluidNinja Live 2 is compatible with Unreal Engine 5.6+. It is an upgrade to existing Live 1 licenses. FluidNinja Live 1 is still available, and is compatible with Unreal Engine 4.26+.

For indie artists and studios with under $100,000/year in revenue, perpetual Personal licenses cost $149. For larger studios, Professional licenses cost $2,999.99.

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Andras Ketzer releases FluidNinja Live 2 for Unreal Engine

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