Probably not everybody here knows about the game “Wuthering Waves” since it’s a bit more niche, but since it’s also a fairly high-end Unreal Engine 4 game, I thought maybe somebody here has looked into it’s different systems.
I’m currently trying to recreate a similar style ‘Water System’, as Wuthering Waves’s, in Unreal Engine 5. And while I already have a decent amount of UE knowledge myself (and actively play the game), I’m having a hard time figuring out how their water actually works.
Some parts of it feel similar to Unreal’s built-in experimental Water System plugin, but not entirely either. The character interaction/ripples don’t seem to behave like the default UE water interaction I get. At the same time, it also doesn’t look as simulation-heavy or precise as something like Fluid Flux 3.0.
Because of that, I’m stuck somewhere in-between:
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It feels too advanced to just be a flat plane + shader tricks.
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But it also doesn’t seem like a fully simulated fluid system either.
Does anybody know:
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What kind of setup they may be using?
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Whether they’re likely extending UE4’s water system internally?
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Or if there are any talks, presentations, breakdowns, shader analyses, etc. about it?
Extra question:
I’d also really love insight into how their water material/shader itself may work. I know that’s much harder to identify from just gameplay footage, but in my opinion it’s one of the cleanest and most elegant stylized-realistic water shaders I’ve seen in UE.
Would appreciate literally any technical observations or theories people might have. ![]()


