fluid effects

[TRGraphics]

Which program would you guys recommend for pouring water from a glass and then cleaning it up with a cloth? I know there are several available but fluid simulation is all I really need.

I have searched the forum, but no real suggestions for what I need. Thanks for your help.

Tony

[joconnell]

You've only glu 3d or realflow - realflow is more solid / complicated and it sits outside of max so you've gotta export a scene, sim it and then import the results. Glu 3d isn't quite as good / stable but it's easier to use and conveniently sits in your scene. Probably about a third of the price too.

[simmsimaging]

If you have time and money then Realflow is for sure the way to go, but if it doesn't need to be really "perfect" then Glu and some hand tuning will probably get you there.

You might want to give a look at Master Bercon's metaball utility too - it's pretty fast, but you need to work out the particle behaviour still.

b

[TRGraphics]

Thanks for the information guys. I will take a look at both. Since this will probably be a rare thing at the office, we do furnture and environments to place them in, glu3d sounds like it may work for us. I wouldn't expect any need for the program other than what I described and maybe some fountain effects, but that's about it.

Tony

[werticus]

to further this discussion, what would be the best way to simulate a pond with fish (animated meshes following paths) affecting the water?

[Da_elf]

realflow has in something called realwave which would do it

[andrewjohn81]

we stopped using glu because it is extremely scene size dependent and does Not work in real world scenes with the size being in mm (our engineering standard worldwide).

Particles fall through a single plane surface. Unacceptable. I understand falling through two different objects who touch, but a solid or even a single surface? No excuse.

I talked to them and they just told me to use inches instead. I live in the US, but come on. Inches and feet are the dumbest things ever invented. ha, I refuse to do the math.

[TRGraphics]

I agree Andrew. I downloaded the demo and the scale you have to work is just not practical. Is Realflow the same?

Tony

[andrewjohn81]

we don't need that very often, but we just make cleaver use of greenscreen for fluids now.
It's hard to fake the refraction of what's behind it, but in most of Our cases, you don't really notice anyway. The animations look WAY better now also. Not so much like clear paint oozing into a glass.
Now we just need a decent camera and lights.

[instinct]

Realflow has a global scale multiplier. I usually work in cm. If i recall right RF expects meter. So turning global scale to 0.01 does the trick to get everything in nice and practical scale when importing.

Realflow does have a lot of issues but i currently dont really see any commercially available alternative.

Last time i used it aint too long ago on the Polo project...that was quite some fun with multi-million particle sims heh.

Regards,
Thorsten

[Da_elf]

i got headaches right now with realflow and stickyness. want paint to splash on a wall and stay there and not bounce off or run down immediately.

[TRGraphics]

I'm looking at the demo of realflow. Can you DR with realflow? What about backburner? What needs to be loaded on the other computers?

[simmsimaging]

I'm looking at the demo of realflow. Can you DR with realflow? What about backburner? What needs to be loaded on the other computers?

I think you just need to install the RF Max plugins on your slaves. I don't have any issues with it at current - but I have in the past. Last job I did with RF was using Max 2009 and the latest plugins from NL. Worked fine for me with both DR and BB.

b

[TRGraphics]

Thanks Brett, seems to be working ok here as well. I have to say, realflow is one complicated piece of software for a novice user like me. Any good tutorials other than their website for simple fluid spills?

[simmsimaging]

yeah, realflow is a bit of a killer. You can see why guys like Mark Stasiuk developed their scripting to the level it is: in the long run it's probably just easier

I would recommend the Gnomon DVD - sculpting with fluid dynamics - it was a big help for me. Other than that for me it's just time-in unfortunately. If you find any other good ones pls let me know.


b