pheonix maya, tidal wave

[monsteradurm]

Hi all,

I've just started working with pheonix 3.03 for maya and am looking for some advice as to the best approach to tackle an effect.

The effect is for a single tidal wave, where the camera does not see the base of where the wave crashes (but some of the white wash is seen when it finishes curling around ). There is some proxy geometry that the animators have used to get the timing of the effect done for previz. The camera also does not see behind the tidal wave.

Would anyone have a recommendation as to workflow technique?

Cheers!

[monsteradurm]

Just to expand slightly, the wave needs to line up quite closely with the proxy geometry.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

If you have a proxy geometry, then it would make more sense to use the Body Force instead of the Wave Force. Depending on the scale and the behavior of the wave, you will have to do some experiments with the Body Force's settings, so if you have any issues or questions about that, please do ask

Cheers!

[monsteradurm]

I am still struggling to get an example working with this effect.

Presently my workflow is as follows:
I have a pool of water that I setup using an initial fill and a cube.

Ive got a body force attached to a mesh. This mesh is in the shape of a wave, is not an enclosed surface ( it is in the form of a plane with deformation, though I have tried to enclosing the mesh also so that the wave was roughly the proportion of the entire pool + wave deformation ).

The problems I am having is that the body force is either or all:
too slow to react to the deformation therefore it isnt lining up
the whole or most of the water body is attracting to the body force and isnt fitting to the bodyforce mesh.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[monsteradurm]

Im also noticing after the initial fill up - the pool of water continues to sink gradually. Why would this happen? The simulation is contained in a grid with 'jammed both' that snuggly fits the body of water..

[George Barzinski]

Hi,
you should increase sim size or the unit scale. Make it like a real world scale.

[monsteradurm]

Hi,
you should increase sim size or the unit scale. Make it like a real world scale.

It is at real world scale. I made sure it was setup that way prior to simulation and clarified with the grid setup.

[George Barzinski]

What's your grid resolution?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Make sure to always use closed geometries - otherwise, if it seemingly works, it would only work by chance.

The body force will have some delay indeed - you can balance between the delay and getting the liquid to stick to the wave too much using a combination of the strength and damping parameters of the Body Force.

Cheers,

[monsteradurm]

Thankyou for the advice Svetlin. It now feels like I am making some progress.

I have a question regarding the rendering process. I have attached 2 images, a mesh preview and a rendered frame. The shape of the mesh preview is quite different to the rendered frame. In the rendered frame the characters are being swallowed by the wave, but in the mesh preview the character positioning is fine. Am i able to tweak the rendered shape to be closer to the mesh preview.

I am also wondering if i could make the 'splashy' bits less ball like and where abouts they are getting there shader from. I dont have foam enabled, only mist/splash.

[monsteradurm]

OK. figured out the foamshader/splash stuff and if I use the voxel preview its a closer representation to what renders.. thanks

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hmm, not cool though - the viewport mesh and the rendered result have to be identical. I just recently found an issue in Maya where if you have the simulation paused and you scroll the timeline and render a different frame, still the last simulated frame gets rendered instead of the frame you viewed on the timeline. If this is not the case, can you share shots of your render and preview settings?

[monsteradurm]

Hmm, not cool though - the viewport mesh and the rendered result have to be identical. I just recently found an issue in Maya where if you have the simulation paused and you scroll the timeline and render a different frame, still the last simulated frame gets rendered instead of the frame you viewed on the timeline. If this is not the case, can you share shots of your render and preview settings?

Sorry to say this also seems to be the case in the scene I'm currently working in.

[monsteradurm]

Another question:
Is there a way to export the 'splash' (Foam shader on 'splashes' mode ) with deep EXR's ?

I tried geometry mode, which just made the splash invisible, and without geometry mode the EXRs contained 'holes' where the splash voxels were.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Geometry mode in the Particle Shader should be the way to go. Is it possible to send that scene over so we can debug it?