AquaForge Lite: Free Liquid Simulation for Blender

AquaForge Lite is a free liquid simulator for Blender. Pour into a glass, crash a wave against a wall, drop a ball into a pool, or run a tap into a sink, and render it in Cycles or EEVEE.

EVERYTHING IN LITE
• Fluid: any closed mesh fills with liquid, with a starting velocity if you want to throw it.
• Obstacles: liquid flows around them. Keyframed, parented or deforming obstacles push the liquid as they move.
• Inflow and Outflow: taps, pours and drains. Turn them on and off with keyframes.
• Liquid presets: Water, Honey and Milk set the thickness and the surface material in one click. Viscosity can also be set by hand.
• Smooth surface: the particles become a smooth liquid mesh, with Radius, Detail and Smoothing controls. The raw particles carry a velocity attribute for your own Geometry Nodes.
• Background baking: Blender stays usable while you bake. The panel shows the frame, the speed and the time left, and frames appear as they're done.
• Pause and Resume: stop a bake any time and carry on from the last finished frame, even after Blender crashed or the power went out.
• Bake estimate: particles, memory, disk space and bake time, shown before you bake.
• Compact cache: about 12 bytes per particle per frame.
• Quick Start: five ready-made scenes (Dam Break, Pour into Glass, Tap and Sink, Ball Splash, Wave Paddle) and Fill Domain to Level.
• Clear messages: a mesh with holes is named and refused instead of baking wrong; the panel tells you when settings changed since the last bake.

HOW IT WORKS
1. Press N in the 3D viewport and open the AquaForge tab.
2. Add a Quick Start scene, or give your own objects a role: Domain, Fluid, Obstacle, Inflow or Outflow.
3. Press Bake. Scrub the timeline while it bakes, then render.

REQUIREMENTS
• Blender 4.5, 5.1 or 5.2
• Windows 64-bit (macOS and Linux builds are planned)
• A multi-core CPU; the bake uses all cores
• Lite simulates at up to resolution 150

GOOD TO KNOW (PUBLIC BETA 0.9.0)
• Fluids, obstacles, inflows and outflows must be closed meshes (no holes). Give thin shapes thickness with Solidify.
• Obstacles thinner than one grid cell can let liquid through: make them thicker or raise the resolution.
• Foam and spray (whitewater) are not in this version yet.
• This is a beta: please report anything that doesn't work, it helps make the 1.0 release solid.

AQUAFORGE PRO
AquaForge Pro is in development: higher resolutions, whitewater, surface tension, wind, export to Alembic/USD/VDB and a large preset library. Lite stays free.

INCLUDED
• aquaforge_lite-0.9.0.zip (install with Edit › Preferences › Get Extensions › Install from Disk)
• User guide

LICENSE
GPL-3.0-or-later.