Also from JangaFX, but still in pre-alpha, is LiquiGen, which is exactly what it sounds like — a liquid simulation generator. And true to JangaFX form, it’s real-time — or at the very least near real-time, because you can easily take down your GPU if you throw enough particles at it.

Even in its early alpha state, LiquiGen is really powerful and promising. Like its sister apps, LiquidGen is node based, and it’s a matter of importing or creating any geo as part of the scene, getting your liquid emitter emitting and watching it go. Then you start to dial in the parameters — as it is simulating. This is definitely leaps and bounds more efficient than the days when I was simulating in RealFlow, where I would sim, leave for a while, come back to check out the result, tweak something else, start the sim, etc. — literally rinse and repeat until you have something that is hopefully good. Having your liquid run this fast is definitely changing the game.

Artists familiar with simulating fluids will be familiar with the terminology within LiquiGen, so the learning curve is pretty darn shallow (yeah, water puns all day long). But even if you are a beginner to liquids, you are provided with a bunch of presets to get you started, and because it’s real-time you can immediately see results from the parameters you are experimenting with.

You can choose between raymarcher or path tracer for your viewport renderer. Raymarcher is faster, but path tracer will give you a pretty decent representation of the water with reflections and refractions (which, as you know, is important to liquids). Like GeoGen, I would probably be exporting the fluids to an Alembic sequence to render elsewhere — but much of the Gen community consists of game developers, so they might render out to flipbooks or image sequences that can be brought into a game engine. They have it on the road map to include additional AOVs directly out of LiquiGen.

As mentioned above, LiquiGen is currently in pre-alpha and there are plenty of features that are not yet implemented but on the development road map. But if you want to start to wrap your head around it and can deal with the limitations and instability of an alpha product, then you can get in on the action. You can upgrade your other Gen products to the full suite, and you can opt into the alpha and start making some water simulations. I will definitely be looping back around for a deeper, richer review when LiquiGen hits 1.0.