Stunning Water VFX Based on Wētā's Research on Lagrangian Waves

Junior FX artist Fred Bello shared RiverFX – his Lagrangian Houdini water simulation based on Michael Stark's work. Michael Stark made a bare-bones setup for the Houdini VEX implementation of the Wave Curves advanced technique for simulating Lagrangian water waves on dynamically deforming surfaces.

To liven up the scene and make it more true-to-life, Fred Bello built a custom velocity field around the rocks. This allowed the artist to create realistic disturbances in the water flow, followed by redirection of the stream and waves crashing into the obstacles. Visual direction-wise, Bello drew inspiration from Yuki Ito's fluid simulations.

The artist started by placing rocks in the scene and setting up his velocity fields around them. He then created wave curves around those for a natural flow. After the low mesh was done, he proceeded to make the high mesh from wave curves to give the fluid more definition. On top of those, Bello placed Whitewater to simulate foaming from waves crashing into rocks.

If you enjoyed this fluid simulation from Fred Bello, you can find more of his VFX pieces on Instagram.