Fluid FX Review

Fluid FX universal app. Created by two-time Academy Award winner Jos Stam, this creative app optimizes the state-of-the-art Maya fluid technology effects used in many popular Hollywood films for iOS-powered devices. Although powerful, Maya requires huge amounts of processing power, so Fluid FX’s smooth framerate on iDevices is very impressive.

Fluid FX offers various image warp, smoke, and fire effects with full customizability. For example, you can reset an effect, get its info, auto draw, cycle between presets, take a snapshot, edit colors, and open a control panel containing 10 control dials for greater precision via the main toolbar.

Meanwhile, the control dials allow one to vary gravity, viscosity, fading, turbulence, emission, opacity, swirl, dissipation, diffusion and and incompress. The adjacent color palette allows the user to select almost any hue fathomable. These effects can be applied to any photo stored on the mobile device. In addition, the plus (+) button allows for preset creation. There are no limits to the number of presets that can be saved, granted the user’s mobile device has the available disk space.

The app supports up to ten points of multi-touch input to create realistic depictions of smoke and fire which can also be displayed on much larger screens via video output. Unfortunately, there is no option within the app that allows the user to record the effects in video format. While the ability to promptly generate snapshots of effects is a nice feature to have, for some users the inability to save effects as movie clips may be a deal breaker. Until this feature is added, I do not envision studios or visual effects professionals using this app for quick rendering of visual effects.

In the meantime, Fluid FX can captivate an audience if projected on a large screen at an event or party, or casual users can use it as an outlet for creative expression and relaxation. The speed and stability of this app are remarkable, and so is its $1.99 price tag. We recommend it.