Shenandoah Natural Bridge trail runs alongside Cedar Creek, the waterway responsible for carving out the Natural Bridge, the 215-foot limestone arch that stands as the centerpiece of the Natural Bridge State Park.
We worked with rivers in Organic World Building, but much of my time was spend evaluating various different tools to find the right approach in this setting. I started with the Unreal Water System in it’s early experimental phase with the release of UE5, but found many shortcomings that motivated me to expand my knowledge of how water works in this kind of terrain.
The four tools I evaluated were:
The Unreal Water System is a built-in feature of the Unreal Engine that provides developers with the tools to create realistic and dynamic water bodies. It supports various water types, including oceans, rivers, and lakes. With its physics-based simulation, it offers interactive water surfaces that respond to objects, characters, and environmental factors. The system is designed for both visual fidelity and performance, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
Ultimate River Tool (URT) is a powerful third-party plugin for Unreal Engine designed specifically for the creation and simulation of rivers. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows for the rapid generation of rivers with automatic flow map calculation. URT provides features like foam generation, dynamic water flow, and interaction with the environment. Its procedural approach ensures that rivers seamlessly integrate with the landscape, adapting to the terrain contours.
FluidNinja Live is an advanced tool for real-time fluid simulations in Unreal Engine. It’s not limited to just water but can simulate various fluid dynamics, including smoke, fire, and more. FluidNinja Live stands out for its ability to produce high-quality visual effects in real-time, making it ideal for interactive applications like games and VR experiences. Its GPU-based simulation ensures fast performance, and it offers a range of customizable parameters for fine-tuning the fluid behavior.
FluidFlux is a comprehensive solution for simulating and rendering interactive water surfaces in Unreal Engine. It’s designed to produce realistic water effects, from calm ponds to raging rivers. FluidFlux boasts features like wave propagation, foam generation, and interaction with physical objects. Its adaptive tessellation and advanced shading techniques ensure that water surfaces look visually stunning while maintaining optimal performance.
I went with FluidFlux in the end. I may detail this in a future section of this site, but in short I wanted a particle based approach in any section that tended towards cascading, rocky effects. I wanted to avoid solutions such as Unreal water System that, as far as I could determine, were intended for more sytlized Fortnight environments, were it was of benefit to flatten out riverbeds wather than leaving the chaos of high resolution heightmaps.