Waterfall Tool and Waterfall Tool 2 Differences

The Waterfall Tool and Waterfall Tool 2 are two completely different products offering different solutions. We currently plan on supporting both products going forward as they both have different use-cases for different types of projects.

Waterfall Tool

• Fab Link

• Documentation

The first Waterfall Tool was built way back in UE4.17. It is super simplistic in its approach of using spline mesh planes and has very limited functionality.

Features

• Spline based Waterfall Tool.

• Automatic ground detection.

• Dynamic Material Object Detection.

• Material Settings: Color, Brightness, Flow Speed, and more!

• All Particle Effects have LODs for better performance.

Pros

• Super simple and easy to implement

• Good for styalised projects

Cons

• Limited to using straight-edged, flat planes

• Limited functionality and flexibility to create more complex waterfalls

Waterfall Tool 2

• Fab Link

• Documentation

The Waterfall Tool 2 has been built from the ground up in UE5.2 as a way to create much more realistic and less-stylized waterfalls to cater for the ever-increasing demand for more realistic environments. It provides a full Editor Mode and has many more variables and uses dynamic meshes and spline paths to build geometry from scratch, giving it the ability to bend along a cliff-face, rather than being a simple straight plane.

Features

• Create a realistic waterfall by dragging and dropping and clicking a couple of buttons!

• Create waterfalls that aren’t just planes but instead bend to conform to the cliff-face!

• Full flexibility when it comes to tweaking variables for how paths, meshes, and FX generate!

• Split into Simple and Advanced Modes to cater for a wide variety of use cases and technical ability!

• Ability to bake the Dynamic Meshes to a single Static Mesh for optimization.

• Includes a Material for each mesh type.

• Includes Niagara System assets for each global VFX Component.

• Includes Audio Components for SFX (SFX Assets not included).

• UI to easily add and modify additional VFX and SFX Components to any of the spline points on any of the paths.

• Most variables are exposed to Blueprints and most functions are virtual, allowing the possibility to add on top of this system!

Pros

• Provides a full Editor Mode with many parameters to provide flexibility

• Create realistic-looking waterfalls for less-styalised projects

• Generates custom meshes based on an offline particle simulation to create waterfalls that conform to a cliff-face rather than being a simple flat, straight-edged plane

• Ability to bake meshes into a single Static Mesh with an option to also combine same Materials into singular slots, which provides a more optimised version of the waterfall, reducing the number of draw calls and removing all the overhead of the Dynamic Meshes.

Cons

• Better to create more realistic waterfalls, rather than styalised waterfalls

• Bigger learning curve