// undine docs
Presets
Presets provide reusable starting points for different kinds of liquid behavior and mesh output.
The current panel exposes material presets in Sim Params and Meshify presets for surface reconstruction quality.
Simulation material presets
Undine is designed to cover a broad range of liquid behavior, from water-like motion to highly viscous materials.
The Sim Params tab exposes quick material families for Water, Oil, Honey, Chocolate, and Slime. Advanced dense-material presets such as THICK_EXACT are opt-in numerical routes, not a promise that viscoelastic memory, plasticity, or GPU-resident paste behavior is active.
| Preset | Use as a starting point for | Review after applying |
|---|---|---|
| Water | Clean low-viscosity liquids. | Gravity, PIC Blend, pressure iterations, surface tension, and density strength. |
| Oil | Heavier liquids with smoother motion. | Drag, viscosity, friction, and damping. |
| Honey | Slow, thick liquids. | Substeps, CFL target, viscosity quality, and collider contact. |
| Chocolate | Dense stylized food or molten material behavior. | Density, surface behavior, smoothing, final mesh thickness, and whether the advanced dense-material branch is actually enabled. |
| Slime | Cohesive or elastic-looking stylized fluids. | Surface tension, vorticity, reseeding, and mesh smoothing. |
| THICK_EXACT | Dense, high-viscosity shots that need the exact strain-rate viscosity foundation. | CPU/GPU routing, fallback reason strings, strict-mode diagnostics, substeps, and whether viscoelastic memory or paste forces are separately enabled. |
| Chocolate Memory (Experimental) | Hold-shape chocolate with viscoelastic memory. | Memory ON + Herschel-Bulkley + yield 350 Pa, relaxation 0.35 s, polymer ratio 0.50. CPU-only reference, reversible, not promoted until visual QA. |
| Toothpaste Memory (Experimental) | Crest-holding paste with viscoelastic memory. | Memory ON + Herschel-Bulkley + yield 900 Pa, relaxation 0.55 s, polymer ratio 0.65. CPU-only reference, reversible, not promoted until visual QA. |
Viscosity quality presets
Separate from material families, the Simple viscosity mode exposes a quality ladder. These are numerical biases, not materials: they decide how carefully the viscous operator is solved.
Preview with a light preset and switch to Thick Exact only for the final pass. Thick Exact is the exact strain-rate route — it is not viscoelastic memory by itself.
| Quality preset | Use as a starting point for | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Fast | Water and low-viscosity fluids; interactive preview. | Cheapest. |
| Balanced (default) | Most fluids; the recommended starting point. | Low. |
| PRO Lite | Thick fluids that look too diffusive on Fast/Balanced, without the exact solve. | Moderate. |
| Thick Exact | Very thick materials (honey, syrups, thick sauces, base chocolate) for final bakes. | Highest; CPU-only operator. |
Custom simulation presets
Custom presets capture tuned Sim Params values under a reusable name.
Built-in presets are locked, so Save New is the expected path when a built-in material has been adjusted for a particular production need.
| Action | Purpose | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Apply Selected | Writes the selected preset into the current scene settings. | Use before manual tuning. |
| Save New | Creates a custom preset from current values. | Use after tuning a reusable behavior. |
| Update Selected | Updates the selected custom preset. | Locked built-in presets cannot be updated. |
| Delete Selected | Deletes the selected custom preset. | Locked built-in presets cannot be deleted. |
Meshify presets
Meshify presets fill the visible surface reconstruction settings.
The screenshots show Final Ultra, described in the interface as maximum quality. Treat it as a final-output preset rather than the fastest iteration preset.
| Preset type | Primary goal | Likely tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Preview | Fast feedback while testing simulation timing and general shape. | Lower surface fidelity. |
| Balanced | Useful quality while still iterating. | Moderate cost. |
| Final | High-quality surface generation. | Higher memory and compute cost. |
| Final Ultra | Maximum quality from the visible preset set. | Slowest and most expensive option. |
Whitewater FX presets
Whitewater FX (Beta) presets live in the Other tab and control only the secondary visual layer. They do not modify primary FLIP/APIC water, do not change pressure, and do not feed Meshify.
The recommended workflow is to enable Whitewater FX, choose a preset, and adjust only Amount, preview budget, or advanced emission, lifetime, buoyancy, and drag controls when the shot needs it. Preview budgets control realtime emission and transfer cost; Production Bake can generate the separate versioned cache later from an approved particle or Streamflow cache.
| Preset | Use for | Typical tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Light | Cheap previews while testing timing and broad motion. | Lowest secondary count. |
| Medium | Balanced demos and everyday review. | Moderate detail and viewport cost. |
| Heavy | Dense impact, wake, waterfall, or splash scenes. | Higher viewport and cache budget. |
| Cinematic | Render review or final shots where secondary detail sells the water. | Highest secondary density and cost. |
How this page can grow
Future preset groups may be organized by behavior family, production goal, scene scale, or learning path, while still linking back to the relevant parameter chapters.