Infinity Pools

[dj_buckley]

I've searched the forum for similar and only found 1 thread from years ago and I was the last person to respond to it. But I need to make the most accurate infinity pool possible for (relatively) close-up animations.

You know the type - where the water from the top pool rolls over the edge creating a waterfall effect and into a pool below.

These videos show the exact effect I'm trying to achieve, not the best examples, but the best I could find:

Video 1 Timestamps - 8 seconds, 1 minute and 3 minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNjy3yuWQs

Video 2 Timestamps - 11 minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkOkf1gfEyc

The second video isn't the exact effect as the water is cascading down a more irregular wall and the top edge overhangs said wall, but it does show very clearly the variation of the water rolling over the top edge of the pool, and it shows the random small undulations and splashes you get in the cascading water down the wall and then the smaller splashes into the pool below.

What would be the most accurate way to recreate this with Phoenix.

I've tried methods using a single piece of geometry and the OceanTex in the displacement but it's hard to control whilst avoiding clashes with the underlying geometry and not very realistic.

[slavina.nikolova]

Hey,

You could try a setup with a cascade connection, where the fluid flows from one Simulator into another. The option you will need for this setup to work is located in the Grid rollout -> Cascade Simulator. This option specifies the source Liquid Simulator to connect the selected Simulator to, forming a cascading simulation. This allows you to join several Simulators into a structure with a complex shape. Here you could find more information about the Cascade Simulator option -
https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX3M...ractionsBetwee nSimulators-CascadeConnectionTransferringfluidbetweenSimulator susingaCascadeConnection and https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX3M...ContainerWalls
We also have a Template Scene - Liquid Cascade Simulation, that might be useful - https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4M...cadesimulation

Also, both Simulators can have the Initial Liquid Fill Up option enabled, so that you will have liquid in the pool from the start of the simulation. And then you can have an emitter in the first Simulator to generate more liquid, splash and foam particles that will cascade to the second Simulator.

In addition, we have a Pool Example Scene - https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4M...pleScenes-Pool, that might be useful as a starting point. In this scene a Pure Ocean Mode and a Phoenix Ocean Texture are used to displace the pool surface. In your case you could try with a Wave Force with loaded Phoenix Ocean Texture in the Ocean Map slot. More information about the Wave Force - https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4M...+%7C+WaveForce


Hope this helps!

[dj_buckley]

Thank you for the detailed response. I'll try the things you've mentioned and report back.

[dj_buckley]

Hi Slavina, the first two links in you're reply don't take me to the articles

[slavina.nikolova]

Hey Dave,

Could you try these two:

-> https://docs.chaos.com/pages/viewpag...cadeConnection

-> https://docs.chaos.com/pages/viewpag...ContainerWalls


Cheers!

[dj_buckley]

Perfect thank you

[dj_buckley]

Okay so I'm confused by this already. For what it's worth I'm a complete Phoenix novice.

From what I understand there are multiple ways to use "Initial Fill". You can do it through the LiquidSimulator or you can simply right click on an object and do it via the Phoenix properties.

In this instance I assume I want to use the LiquidSimulator.

The way I'm trying to approach it is as follows.

I have my "pool" geometry. I've simplified it whilst I learn.

I've then created a LiquidSimulator that encompasses the first section of pool that I want to fill. I've specified the fill percentage so the water level sits below the "shelf".

My first question is, how do I get the simulation to start using a fully settled pool? Whenever I start the simulation there's already movement in the particles.

I've added the pool geometry to the 'Confine Geometry' but this throws up a problem. It doesn't seem to do anything. See attachment 1.jpg

So I tried adding the pool geometry to the 'Cutter Geometry'. Now it does something but all the particles are stuck to one polygon. See attachment 2.jpg.

I only managed to get the pool geometry to fill correctly with liquid by making it a completely closed object with the normals flipped and with both 'Confine Geometry' and 'Cutter Geometry' ticked. See attachment 3.jpg and 3a.jpg.

This almost defeats the object and would mean having to use dummy geometry for every pool I make.

Regardless I continued with this method but shortly ran into another problem.

I added a Plain Force to get the water moving over the shelf. To do this I had to turn on 'Adaptive Grid', the problem with this is once the adaptive grid passes the shelf, it then fills up again due to the initial fill. See attachment 4.jpg. Obviously I don't want this to happen, I just want the water to go over the shelf and then drop down into a much shallower pool.

So now I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing at all.

Some detailed pointers would be helpful.

[dj_buckley]

Any additional help on this would be greatly appreciated

[dj_buckley]

Another perfect example of what I want to achieve, later in the animation there will be objects interacting with the main pool causing slightly larger 'waves' to flow over the edge https://vimeo.com/513289126

[dj_buckley]

Ok so I'm getting somewhere, the problem i was having in the screenshots above was 'fill up for ocean' being checked. I've unchecked that and now the water does move across to the lower pool as expected.

My next problem is there is too much starting motion and i can't seem to make the effect subtle enough.

When I first start simulating with initial fill, the liquid appears to have some initial motion as if it's been dropped into the pool geometry, this creates a 'bulge' or large wave like effect that I don't really want.

As you can see in all of the video references I've sent. The effect is really subtle. The water fill line is already lined up with the infinity edge and then it almost trickles down the wall. At the minute I'm getting more of a heavy gale effect.

The pools in the reference videos are almost flat, and it's the gentle breeze and possibly the movement from any filters that cause the water to have a constant but subtle overflow effect.

[lucas_clementino1]

Hi Dave! I'm also at the moment starting a job where I'm going to need this solution and I've come to anticipate looking at the forum if there's anything. Luckily I found your topic, I hope it's working out there, if you can share the final result here with us!

[dj_buckley]

I'm struggling with it at the minute as described in my last post above

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey Dave,

In order for the liquid to settle you have a few options - you can increase the scene scale in the Grid rollout - if it's too low the liquid will splash like in a glass, though if you raise it too much it will behave like an ocean, so you have to see what works for your scene.

The other option is to increase the steps per frame - this will increase simulation time so be careful when increasing them.

Finally you can do a pre-roll, just sim a few frames at the start and let the liquid settle.

You can combine all of the three things I listed and you should get a good result.

Cheers!

[fixeighted]

I was interested in this topic, so I just made a scene.
It behaves generally as it should at a lower resolution, though as soon as I increase resolution
then the sim just behaves insanely, increasing the initial 30mil particles to half a billion within a couple of frames, due
to what looks to be just incorrect interactions/collision speeds, at least when you look at the very low emission speeds.

I don't see any obvious way to anticipate this, or any method by which to troubleshoot to adjust in any meaningfully interactive way.
Probably there is a simple answer that hopefully doesn't include 'it's trial and error'
Maybe you could investigate and suggest a solution which could help me and maybe the OP too

Here is the scene file so you will see what I mean. I left it set to the resolution where it goes mad, so just lower it once or twice to get what I originally set up.

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey,

Thanks for the scene. I've made some updates to the setup and this is the result I got at frame 122.

What I did was to change the scene scale of the Simulator to 2 so that the liquid moves a bit slower.

Removed the viscosity, surface tension and the Sticky liquid - in this setup I think you can get away without any of these.

I also disabled the Initial liquid fill for the simulator and made a duplicate of the bottom face of the pool and extruded it. Then from the Phoenix properties of the object I enabled the Initial Liquid Fill option.
This way you get a precise control of how much of the pool will be filled without having to rely on the simulator size.

Then I scaled and repositioned a bit the box used for the underwater emission and also made it non-solid from the Phoenix properties, this way it won't create any strange velocities and won't interact with the simulaiton.

Here is the modified scene as well. Hope this helps