laboratorium animation

[flipside]

Hi!

I need to do an animation of some kind of cartoon labo with all kinds of pipes and bulbs with liquids an gasses.

For example a bulb filled with some liquid should ba animated so that the liquid seems to run down a pipe and fill up another bulb. This shouldn't be realistic, but I even don't know how to do it unrealistic. Should I work with animated booleans (a pipe inside a pipe which is the liquid)?

Any hints, tips or clues would be very appreciated!

The only thing I can animate now is simply moving stuff and adding some modifiers. I never did something like this.

I don't want to use fluid simulators.

Gas shouldn't really look like gass, in fact there should be no difference between liquids and gasses.

Thanks for any help!

wouter

[lukx]

oki flipside I like figuring out this kind of tricks so created this scene for you (15 minutes ). Hope you will understand how it works.
http://lukx.hellnet.pl/misc/vray/flipPipes.rar

[flipside]

I really appreciate your help lukx! But there's a small problem... I can't open your file as I'm still on max5.1... Sorry!

Will try to download max7 demo, but I already did that a while back so I'm not sure if I can do it again.

[lukx]

oh! I did it with max7.5. I'm not sure if in max 5.1 are modyfiers I used (Shell, Path Deform Binding (WSM). Anywya I will try explain what I did.
I created pipe (spline with renderable option thicknes 5) then edid poly removed top and bottom cover. Next putted shell modifier to get glass thicknes. Next I copy spline I used for pipe and created circle spline a bit smaller than pipe radius. Next I put extrude modifier on circle and path deform binding modifier (then played with it a bit to get same shape as pipe. This is my fluid. Now with animatingt extrude you will make fluid go down or up inside the pipe.That's it.