Water System
World BuildingWater System plugin: oceans, rivers, lakes, and custom water bodies with physically-based rendering, landscape interaction, and buoyancy.
/skill water-system What this skill does
Water System gives you expert guidance on UE5's integrated Water System plugin for creating oceans, rivers, lakes, and custom water bodies. This skill covers the full pipeline from placing water body actors and configuring wave simulation to setting up landscape interaction so terrain automatically carves around your water. You will also learn how to enable swimming and buoyancy for gameplay, configure underwater post-process effects, and add particle-based water effects using Niagara.
Covers
- Water Body actors (Ocean, River, Lake, Custom)
- Water mesh rendering and wave configuration
- Landscape integration (terrain carving)
- Water material properties
- Wave simulation (Gerstner waves)
- Swimming and buoyancy
- Underwater post-process effects
- Water Niagara effects
Does not cover
- Niagara fluid simulation → niagara-fluids
- Ship and boat physics → vehicle-physics
- Rain and weather effects → weather-system
- Advanced water shaders → material-authoring
How to use
Invoke directly in Claude Code:
/skill water-systemThis skill is also auto-detected when your prompt mentions water, ocean, river, lake, pond, waterfall, swimming, wave, or water-body intent. AgentUX will automatically activate Water System when it recognizes relevant water context in your request.
Key Unreal Engine concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| AWaterBody (Ocean, River, Lake, Custom) | Actor classes representing different water body types, each with specialized spline or volume shapes and rendering behavior tailored to their real-world counterpart. |
| UWaterMeshComponent | The rendering component that generates the tessellated water surface mesh, handling LOD transitions and wave displacement in real time. |
| Gerstner Waves | A physically-based wave model that creates realistic ocean surface motion by combining multiple sinusoidal waves with circular particle orbits. |
| Landscape Interaction | The system that automatically carves and blends terrain around water bodies, creating natural shorelines and riverbeds without manual sculpting. |
| Water Body Interaction | Runtime interaction features including ripple effects from actors moving through water, splash particles, and surface disturbance feedback. |
| Buoyancy | A physics-based buoyancy component that calculates upward force on submerged actors based on water depth and wave height, enabling floating objects and swimming characters. |
Related skills
landscape-management
Create and edit Landscapes and terrain
material-basics
Apply and configure materials
post-process-fundamentals
Post-process pipeline effects
niagara-basics
Niagara particle system for VFX
What you'll learn
- How to place and configure ocean, river, lake, and custom water bodies
- Setting up Gerstner wave simulation for realistic water surfaces
- Integrating water bodies with your landscape for natural shorelines
- Enabling swimming and buoyancy for characters and objects
- Adding underwater effects and Niagara-based water particles