Ink in water effect

[SonOfNimrod]

Hi All.

Does anyone know of any good tutorials on how to create an 'ink in water' effect?

[joconnell]

It's going to be very hard to get all of the proper swirling motion without using a fluid simulator. Ideally you'd use realflow or fume to get the movement and look. If you can only use the base tools in max then you're looking at pflow and the wind spacewarp with plenty of turbulence. Take a look at http://www.allanmckay.com/html/tuts_oldvidtuts.html and the particle dispersion tutorial down the bottom - it's a very good start and probably as close as you'll get with the base tools. Another option is use stock footage from artbeats.com which unfortunately you have to pay for. Lastly you could just shoot it if you have a camera - put a glass bowl against a white wall and tip some ink in

[SonOfNimrod]

Looks good. Thanks for that!

Ideally I'd like to use the fluid sims as I'm trying to get the ink part into the form of some text.