Niagara Fluids vs Fluid Ninja

Development Pipeline & Plugins
, , ,
1

Hello!

We are looking to simulate some fluids and would like to decide for one or the other of the plugins in the topic. Here are the results of our assessment:

Niagara Fluids pros:

  • Official Unreal Plugin for Niagara.
  • Detailed 3D Volume (Fluid Sim).
  • Receives lighting from DirectionalLight.
  • Animated.
  • Interacts with an environment.

Niagara Fluids cons:

  • Does not receive lighting from point lights.
  • Extreme hit on performance (still in development?).

Fluid Ninja pros:

  • Unofficial but heavily established Plugin.
  • Detailed 3D Volume (Different Methods available).
  • Receives lighting from DirectionalLight and other Light Sources.
  • Animated.
  • Interacts with Environment.
  • Niagara Integration.
  • Performance friendly compared to the other Methods.
  • Extremely flexible toolset.
  • Looks better than Niagara Fluids.

Fluid Ninja cons:

  • New workflows.
  • Costs.

Fluid Ninja seems like a no brainer, however I’d prefer to use native Unreal Engine everything as much as possible to simplify developer onboarding and engine upgrades.

Would appreciate your thoughts.

3 Likes
2

I’m also interested in this question and the thoughts of anyone who’s had experience with Fluid Ninja. I’ve been watching it’s development for a while and it looks very interesting to me, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet (due to cost). I’ve also been keeping an eye on Fluid Flux which looks like it’s doing some really nice things with water bodies, but doesn’t seem to have the same breadth of Fluid Ninja.

I guess the most important question to start with is what type of fluids are you simulating? Smoke and fire, rivers and oceans, waterfalls, sand and snow? All of the above?

3

I’d say we simulate hm… fog and smoke - small dispersed water and dust droplets over large areas to visualize the fogginess of asteroid fields in space, with objects passing by being able to interact with and push those droplets around.

We are not there yet so still looking for suggestions on how to implement this best. :slight_smile: