Shaders are an essential component of game development, providing the visual effects that help to immerse players in the game world. One popular effect used in many games is liquid. Creating these effects in Unity can be challenging, but fortunately, there are assets like Liquid Volume Pro 2 available on the Unity Asset Store.

Liquid Volume Pro 2 is a powerful tool that allows game developers to create stunning liquid effects easily. It can create a wide range of effects, with full control over liquid, foam, and smoke appearance and a large set of options to adjust behaviour, resulting in limitless liquid effect possibilities. In addition, the asset has been designed to be easy to use, even for those new to Unity. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what this asset can do and how it can help game developers.

Liquid volume evolved from its first version, giving birth to version 2 of the asset, which brought support for URP in addition to the Built-In pipeline. To cover the whole pipeline availability, Liquid Volume Pro 2 is now available for HDRP, including extensive appearance, behaviour and vast control options.

Liquid Volume Pro 2 offers a wide range of features that allow game developers to create stunning liquid effects. Some of the key features of this asset include:

• Realistic liquid simulation: Liquid Volume Pro 2 uses advanced physics-based simulation to create realistic liquid effects that can be customized to suit your needs.
• Customizable liquid properties: With Liquid Volume Pro 2, you can adjust a wide range of properties, including color, viscosity, density, and more. This allows you to create the perfect liquid effect for your game.
• Interactive liquid effects: Liquid Volume Pro 2 allows you to create interactive liquid effects that can be affected by game objects and player actions.
• Easy integration with other Unity assets: Liquid Volume Pro 2 is designed to work seamlessly with other Unity assets.
• Mobile-friendly: Liquid Volume Pro 2 is optimized for mobile devices, making it a great choice for mobile game development.

Adjusting General Settings

Before starting to use the liquid effect with your mesh, you must specify the type of “topology“, which can vary from irregular to other shapes. Next, choose the detail type from the dropdown, which will designate the quality of the liquid. A very interesting feature here is to consider whether you want an individual liquid layer or multiple, which can be chosen from this dropdown. If you choose multiple, you will be able to have multiple liquid layers, each of them with its own appearance settings.

Additionally, you can control the global alpha of the liquid and other settings like depth and parent aware.

Adjusting Appearance in Liquid Volume Pro 2

Here is where the artistic & creative part comes in. Brainstorm the outcome of the liquid effect that you’d like to achieve at the end, and let Liquid Volume Pro 2 do the work. In this section, you can adjust options like color, murkiness, emission, and turbulence (waving simulation) & give the final touch with sparks and deep obscurance. Furthermore, you can enable light scattering effect & point lights, which will make a beautiful point lighting animation through the container. The example below offers an overview of these options combined.

Remember the “Multiple Layer” option we mentioned before? Choosing this option will make the previous parameters available for all the different layers that you will choose for the liquid. This means you can adjust the appearance for any of the individual layers. Remember that the number of available layers is designed by you, and this specific topology allows bubbles and other additional options to make those layers miscible. An interesting thing to keep in mind is that changing density will affect the liquid position, a realistic behaviour we can see, for example, with water and oil.

Liquid Volume Pro 2: Foam & Liquid Effects

A liquid effect wouldn’t be complete without foam and some smoke settings. In fact, potions don’t seem that dangerous if there’s no smoke coming out, right?

In addition to the liquid configuration itself, you can also adjust foam parameters, with full control over density, color, thinckness and a few aditional settings to make it as realistic as possible.

Smoke is another appearance section with no less importance. This option is the one that makes my liquid really stand out and behave realistically. You can, as well, adjust color, scale, height reduction among other options.

Before diving into the Phyisics highlights of Liquid Volume Pro 2, it’s worth mentioning that the flask also has the option to customize its thickness, an important parameter that could make the difference in the final aspect.

What about liquid physics?

Liquid Volume would not be so “PRO” if the reaction to forces would not mimic the real world. Activate this option and play with the “mass” parameter to designate how static or movable the liquid will be according to forces and “damping” to adjust the speed at which the liquid will come to its original place. Now when the container of the liquid is affected by the external collision, it will behave accordingly.

At this point, you should have a beautiful and realistic liquid effect inside your designed container. There’s also an “Advanced” section available, where you can tweak values that will add a final touch to the result you achieved, thanks to the previous sections. A detailed guide on how to use this section can be found here.

Check our tutorials & image-video showcases about use-cases of Liquid Volume Pro 2: