Water VFX Pack (postponed to 2026)

This package was announced years ago, set to arrive at many different points due to some cost related delays. So that was for a long time planned for a point soon after the (somewhat delayed) updates to the pyro video-element pack in development. Pyro Pack 2022

It has occurred to me that there might be a use for these types of elements (bubbles, splashes, water flows/falls, gushing / gurgling water, etc)  and so I'm making an asset pack that covers this topic.

Partly I'm doing this because it's a reasonable additional use of the high-speed camera gear I acquired for my in-development pyro pack,  but also I am sure I'll be able to use many of these elements in my own projects. 

Because I do VFX work on my own indie videos, I know what is involved in that and what content is useful for these purposes. I'm trying to create a new, extensive VFX water pack here based on the types of elements I imagine myself being able to use... and that I think many of you would find useful as well.  Some digital simulation and some real life elements. Some mixes.

The FX will use high-speed, multiangle recording, in and around a big swimming pool setup, with various additional equipment (hoses, buckets, foaming detergent, coloring, balloons, bluescreen, etc - the intention being to develop a wide range of recorded, compositable elements shot using water, and various dynamic interactions between water and air. 

So I expect this collection to ultimately include between 25 and 40 liquid video elements in quality of 4k. Effects may at times involve multiple angles with multiple high speed cameras running, and usually they'll be shot and then masked and digitally processed in such a way that they often can be simply layered into a shot very easily.

This pack while not yet fully done or released still is included in most bundle sales on holidays.

Such bundle deals also include about a dozen already-released, immediately usable packs which, together, already include hundreds of 3d assets, hundreds of video VFX elements, and thousands of PBR texture maps, now just over 5000 asset files combined together in a 95+% off bundle at under $2.

Plus all the 'preorder material' is included - like a handful of indie games in development, plus new asset packs in the works, like this one. 

As of January 2026 itch cashouts have covered:

-A high end monster of a computer system upgrade, 256gb of ram in one room between two chunky big desktops. And it was done right before the price of RAM and bleeding edge GPU hardware went sky high. So I was, in retrospect, super lucky to pull it all in for under $2000. Plus an added 6tb of SSD storage and an added 10tb conventional ROM storage. (On top of roughly 50tb prior total system capacity.)

-Physical gear in garage - A big plastic bin, squirt nozzles/clear tubing, plastic 10gal 'dump tanks', clear balloons, and a half dozen other related items that sound odd but can be used to get smaller scale REAL fluid FX recorded. 

-Plus waterproof black backing, $500 of new 4k multiangle camera gear, and for simulations a mix of new shaders and a high-end digital fluid and foam sim solver that is miles ahead of the Mantaflow one in Blender. As in, not only more customizable and feature rich but way more stable, and 5x faster in most situations. Capable of simulating almost an Olympic-sized pool worth of digital liquid.  

The cost was high in all and it wasn't all covered by itch buyers but about a third was. Other costs are directly ahead - mainly assembly of the last handful of Miniature Multiverse worlds and the cost of launching a half dozen games on Steam, maybe even Epic. Plus a few more assets specific to game dev, and so on. I'm maybe $1500 and a few hundred more hours of work off from launching all of the games I'm quietly pushing forward. If you can help get it over the finish line that'd be amazing as my reserves from Etsy are basically gone right now. Keeping things going hinges on people deciding to buy here, maybe tip, comment, ask questions, make requests/suggestions, and post reviews. There are now 18 reviews and the more exist the more new people showing up can feel safe buying things here. Right now some itch vendors are scammers and mislead customers regarding products, so itch's reputation as a platform is not ideal. Every review posted of any asset pack MASSIVELY boosts confidence and trust around that one pack - the two best selling collections I have are a pair of texture packs with 5, and 4 reviews respectively. There are also some packs with two or one. Some have no reviews yet but could really use them! Thing is: I have thousands of people showing up here monthly and under 1% buy anything. I know from Etsy that with hundreds of reviews present that number can easily rise to 3-4% just due to the presence of added feedback visible. So I am asking you to consider making the decision to post a review of something you bought in a bundle. Because the more positive five-star reviews are present, the more people can feel safe buying here and the more my capacity to build up better asset collections and even indie games, will be boosted.     

So: VFX, ambitious new sets of VFX elements, liquids especially, will now be fast tracked. That means physics sim stuff done as realistically as possible, plus a variety of real life elements like bubbles recorded as compositable elements in a big tank. 

I'm also close to posting Europe, MidEast, Horror asset packs each with a lot of new stuff in them. Hundreds of assets going live there even if delayed by months, finally this February [2026] which should be awesome. Plus we've seen early freebies on the horror-pack page among other free stuff being added, and the 3d assets all now have .GLB format versions which - if your 3d software supports .GLB - is a super convenient format that packs the textures and UVs and mesh data all into one singular file that 'just works' anywhere it's available, and with no setup assigning the related textures, they just are there mapped onto the object instantly. Plus some scattered added items across the furniture, suburban, and the three nature packs as they had the GLB conversions done. Textures? I am moving from the aging 2022 pack to a '2026' pack for March 2026, which isn't visible yet but will soon be. That includes hundreds of new materials from the start and will be a phenomenal addition to all the previous texture packs. 

Won't say you all got me to this point of having a shot at it, entirely, but your purchases got me a good chunk of the way to the position I have now, with new hardware and simulation setup so maybe if the result of THAT sells too, I can get a pipeline of gamedev projects going effectively all through 2026. Experiences and code solved in each project can often be used somewhere else so the hope is it all can be amortized a bit to allow each individual project to be done more efficiently than it would be done if done on its own without prior tools and experience built up.

And while you might not be expecting this, a lot of these paid games will also have free webGL variants with lower res, more compressed textures so they can run successfully in browser. So there will be those on itch, and on the official redesigned game sites, and on Newgrounds, Kongregate maybe? Places people play and discover browser games. So those are the exact same games, just lower res, and the main reason for having Steam, Epic versions is so you can play the games offline, on desktop and take advantage of the graphical improvements of a standalone PC version that is likely $2 or so when not on sale. WebGL limits are inherently severe - we're talking 1gb split between game files and the game's memory use, so the textures, audio and animations/effects HAVE to be heavily compressed to run in a browser at all. No avoiding it. Desktop games can do more. And if you bought one of my complete bundles you already have the desktop version preorder of all game projects via itch so... yeah. Right here, playing and downloading these games through Itch will be the best bet for many of you.

Watch for major updates posted across many categories really soon, so many things will be improved and expanded it will REALLY feel different around here. :)