Ripple Pro is a complete ripple, wake and rain toolkit plugin for 3ds Max developed by Luke Penry. It offers five different ripple sources, two evaluation modes, a wave-equation simulation, procedural rain with splashes and beads, and the performance and caching to take it from viewport to final render.
Pattern mode is for fast, deterministic, procedural ripples, ideal for clean, controllable, art-directed water and motion-graphics looks. Simulation mode is a height-field solver built on the wave equation. Disturbances travel across the surface, interfere with each other, reflect off edges, and lose energy and settle over time. That’s what produces wakes, rain interaction, and ripples that respond to motion — at a fraction of the cost and setup of a full 3D fluid sim.
Ripple Pro lets you choose what drives the surface:
- Point — radial ripples, now able to travel correctly across curved surfaces like spheres and terrain, not just flat planes.
- Mesh — uses an object’s waterline (where it meets the surface), so a boat, a duck, or any shape ripples from its actual outline instead of a circle.
- Spline — use open or closed splines as ripple sources, for art-directed shapes and controlled wavefronts.
- Particles — every particle impact creates a splash. Works with PFlow, tyFlow and other particle systems, and impacts register on any surface shape, flat or curved, automatically.
- Texture / image — drive ripples from a map: bitmaps, procedural maps, OSL, or animated image sequences. The shapes in the image emit the ripples, and in Simulation mode moving artwork produces directional wakes that follow the motion.
You can use multiple geometry sources at once — they all contribute to the same surface.
The plugin is compatible with Max 2024-2027. Price ranges from $25 for a single user license to $429 for 10+ users. More on Gumroad.
