Using a gizmo to achieve a perfectly flat water level

[vraycious]

For a few days I've been trying to figure out how to get a perfectly settled volume of water. It seems that no matter how much you tweak the settings, there will always be some rippling, but I think I've found a workaround.

After reading Ivaylo Katev's explanation of gizmos, I thought they might be useful for this purpose. In the scene below, I used a hemispherical gizmo sized smaller than the fluid source object to occlude the ripples that would otherwise appear on the surface and underside of the liquid volume. The liquid has a chrome material applied to it to exaggerate any rippling.



As a comparison, the below image uses a bowl-shaped gizmo, with no horizontal geometry occluding the surface ripples. (Don't mind the different glass material.)



Am I on the right track here? Obviously this isn't an ideal solution, as the gizmo would have to be disabled or changed before any further rigid body or fluid interaction. Is there a way to set a keyframe that disables the gizmo?

Thanks!

[Ivaylo Katev]

the gizmo is not a solution for flat water surface, it helps only for the walls.
my suggestion is: set spf upper and lower limit to 2. set the advection step to 1000, start the simulation. if the liquid is still not perfectly flat, try to increase the spf.
or just write to support to get nightly builds access, in the incoming version you just have to enable the liquids and in the most cases you obtain perfect flat surface without any additional tweaks

[vraycious]

How do you define perfectly flat? I used those settings for my simulations, and even after 150 frames, I would still get ripples. They are, however, nearly invisible with more matte-like materials.

Another question: is it always better for the geometry of the fluid volume to penetrate the inner walls of its container? Does this minimize settling time?

I've been learning Phoenix on friend's workstation, but I'll tell her about the nightlies, thanks!

[Ivaylo Katev]

well, it can't be perfectly flat, but i mean without waves and bumps.

[TSR_trix]

Ivo, is this also a matter of scene scale? I have try to make settle liquids with brush mode objects and always I have to use 5-10 times bigger scale (in coffee cup scale) to obtain a settle surface.

[Ivaylo Katev]

yes, it is. for smaller scales you need higher spf
btw, this cup is about 40cm, and spf 2 is enough.
i know you are using FT, in general with FT is harder to achieve smooth surface