Having a solid, still body of water, and affecting it with particles

[Neilg]

We might be buying phoenix, but I cant figure out how to use it at all.
I'm trying to create a body of water (which starts perfectly still and unbroken) and then have some geometry particles pass through it which disturbs/reacts to the surface.

So far i've attempted to do this:

"Using brush mode source
Create a geometry covering the volume that should be filled with the liquid.
Exclude this geometry from the interaction, by adding it in the simulator's exclude list, or by just hiding it.
Create a liquid source, and select "brush" for the "if not solid" option.
Animate the discharge from 100 to 0 for the first two frames.
Disable the velocity check box of the source helper"

but:
There is no exclude list.
If I hide the object it doesn't do anything, why is it there in the first place?
Animating the discharge from 100 to 0 (or 1000 to 0) is exactly the same as doing it any other way, why do I do this?
The liquid that I can get to fill up an internal volume with brush mode is active and splashes about all over the place. How do I begin with completely static water?
I also cant find out how to get particles to interact with the fluid at all. I'm after fairly large, simple objects. At the moment i'm just testing with box geometry and they pass straight through.

[jacksc02]

Getting the body of water to be still at the start is almost impossible in my experience.
I think there was some work done on 2.0 that made it better than 1.5 but I am yet to upgrade.

[Ivaylo Katev]

We might be buying phoenix, but I cant figure out how to use it at all.
I'm trying to create a body of water (which starts perfectly still and unbroken) and then have some geometry particles pass through it which disturbs/reacts to the surface.

So far i've attempted to do this:

"Using brush mode source
Create a geometry covering the volume that should be filled with the liquid.
Exclude this geometry from the interaction, by adding it in the simulator's exclude list, or by just hiding it.
Create a liquid source, and select "brush" for the "if not solid" option.
Animate the discharge from 100 to 0 for the first two frames.
Disable the velocity check box of the source helper"

but:
There is no exclude list.
If I hide the object it doesn't do anything, why is it there in the first place?
Animating the discharge from 100 to 0 (or 1000 to 0) is exactly the same as doing it any other way, why do I do this?
The liquid that I can get to fill up an internal volume with brush mode is active and splashes about all over the place. How do I begin with completely static water?
I also cant find out how to get particles to interact with the fluid at all. I'm after fairly large, simple objects. At the moment i'm just testing with box geometry and they pass straight through.

the exclude list is in the interaction panel.
the animation of the discharge is necessary to fill the volume and to stop the further filling. anyway it should be not 100 to 0, but 10000 to 0, or even more (no problem to be bigger). there is a bug in the official release, that makes this value cell size dependent.
from your description i can't understand what kind of situation you are trying to simulate - liquid in zero gravity, or just a container initially filled with water?
i think the first one may be problematic, but the second one is 100% achievable, we have sample scenes that are demonstrating it (the pool). see also the section for settled liquids. however, in any case you will have an initial short movement of the liquid, until it reaches the stable pressure distribution. there is no way to set stable pressure distribution at start so you have to wait few frames. sometimes i'm using restored simulation to skip these initial frames, but you have to simulate them at least once.
the particles interact with the liquid only as sources, there is no rigid body interaction. i suppose you need to splash the water when the particles hit the surface, you have to select the particles in a dummy source in brush mode, that affects only the velocity. the result will be that when a particle hits the surface, the liquid covered by the particle will accept the particle's velocity as if it was hit by a solid object.

edit: i did a simple test scene, the particle source should be set to inject mode, to produce attractive splashes. i will attach the scene and a rendered frame after few minutes

[Ivaylo Katev]

here is the scene and the shot

[Neilg]

I'm not allowed to download them, and using the demo I also don't have any sample files.

[Paul Oblomov]

Not a problem

http://rghost.ru/40595850

[Ivaylo Katev]

I'm not allowed to download them, and using the demo I also don't have any sample files.

the samples are in my documents\phoenix fd\samples

[Neilg]

You mean in here?


I'm going to take a look at this again tomorrow, need to get some thing done for the morning in the meantime.

[Ivaylo Katev]

yes, they should be here
try to reinstall, it may help

[pburges]

I have not been able to get a still body of water working either. The first time I tried it, I got a still body of water that seemed to evaporate over a few seconds. This time, it seems OK for about 10 frames, then the water starts exploding outwards and eventually fills the simulation area. Source has velocity turned off, discharge from 1000-0 on frames 0-1, and If Not Solid set to brush. In the simulator I've turned on static surface correction and strong surface mode but makes no difference. Hidden objects excluded. I've followed the help file to the letter but no luck.

The scene I am making is one with a waterfall. So I want a filled pool at the bottom and a continuous flow falling into it. Is it better to set this all up in one simulation with two different sources, or with two separate cascading simulations? Also, if I get it working, presumably as water falls into the pool the volume will increase and it will overflow. What's the best way to keep the volume roughly constant? I've tried cutting a small hole in the bottom of the pool but of course I have no way of knowing if this will work until I can get the pool to fill properly.

I have read the documentation carefully, but on this particular topic it is rather thin...so any help would be appreciated.

[Ivaylo Katev]

did you tried to compare your settings with these of soma sample scene, pool.max for example?
create asimple scene and send it top us, to see what you are missing

[pburges]

For some reason I do not have the sample scenes, though I am using a fully licensed copy at work. My I.T. manager says they weren't part of the download. Is there somewhere I can download them?

I've tried reading other threads on this forum and downloading the scenes you've posted in response, but it says I do not have permission even though I've registered. I can't seem to attach my file here so I've included some JPEGs. Frame 001 shows the simulation at frame 1 and the settings for the pool source. Frame 050 shows the simulation at frame 50 and the settings for the other source. SimSet shows the settings of the simulator.

There are a lot of threads about this subject and many seem to end with you having to post a scene that explains it. Wouldn't it take up less of your time to just post a step-by-step tutorial on pre-filling liquids...?

Cheers,

Pete

[Ivaylo Katev]

we know that some users do not have sample scenes, the reasons is related to the security policy settings of your machine. the installer do not have rights to create file/directory or something like that.
the reason for your explosion is perhaps the low conservation value (. for still water you need at least 30. i see you are using fuel channel for liquid, that's ok for now, but in the next version we plane to abandon the concept that each channel can be liquid.
this ability was intended to simulate burning liquidized fuel, but it gives worse result than two stage simulation - first the liquid, and second the fire. so, in the next version this ability will be not available, fuel based liquids will not work anymore.
so, my recommendation:
conservation: 40
vorticity:0
maximal step:1000
spf upper limit: 2
spf lower limit: 2
if you continue to use the fuel as liquid, uncheck the temperature channel in the source. if you switch to temperature (for further compatibility) uncheck the fuel channel

[pburges]

Thanks so much Ivaylo, that made a crucial difference! Yes, it behaves much more realistically now. I feel confident I can now achieve the effect I was going for.

We do have fairly tight security on our machines, only our IT has admin rights so we can't install very much without them. I also don't have permission to download the files you've posted in this thread. How do I get permission? And is there anywhere else I can download the sample files?

Also I am confused- I thought that using the fuel channel was the only way to create liquids. Or at least that's how I've been doing it so far. Is there a better way?

I really appreciate your help. I really think Phoenix is an excellent product, and all it needs is more tutorials.

Thanks,

Pete

[Ivaylo Katev]

phoenix naturally uses the temperature channel to simulate the liquid, and when another channel is set to represent liquid it swaps them for certain simulation stages. in the incoming release the liquids will be simplified a lot, only one check box and you have ready for use liquid simulator.
you are not the only user who complained that the sample scenes are not installed. i really doubt that if we fix this it will be forever, the security experts are very creative and will generate new surprises for sure, so we will upload the samples to spot3d.