sorting problems at render time

[jay_vortex]

Hi!

So i got a liquid effect with some characters around the effect.

At render time when the character object is in front of the camera and the fluid is behind the object, on some frames you see the fluid before the character.

It really look like a sorting bug where the renderer is'nt able to tell wich of the fluid or the character is first in Z space.

Is it a bug or there's a parameter somewhere im not aware of that could fix this?

Thx a lot.

Jay.

[Ivaylo Katev]

weird, can you post an image? the objects are not sorted, the raytracing does the trick.

[jay_vortex]

Here you go.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/827/sorting.png/

You can see it pretty good on the little girl's legs. The jet is between the girl and the boy so nothing should be between the camera and the characters.

And while at it, you see the square delimitation on the floor at the bottom of the water effect? The simulator ends there so it would be neat to have a way of making the cells die or disapear before the simulator's limit, but i guess its pretty hard to do since its grid based? Or maybe we would need a drying time below one. Lets say 0.005 and it would dry before the edges of the simulators?

For the moment i think the only way is making the simulator bigger then what we need but then it impact the simulation time a lot. Hmmm

Thx.

Jay.

[Ivaylo Katev]

are you using vray toon?
about the disappearing of the water - just open the negative z boundary, see the grid panel.

[jay_vortex]

Yes there is Vray toon on the water, it help to see it better normally on our still image renders.

That would be the problem?

I should have opened the -z boundary...code 18. ;D

But if we want to see the water dropping on the floor, then disapearing would there be a solution for that?

Using the adaptive grid or putting a bigger grid is'nt a good option i think, too much of a drop in performance.

Will phoenix eventually have something to cope with that?

I think using the multi simulator transfer method for now would help with that. Maybe.

Thx.

Jay.

[Ivaylo Katev]

i suspect vray toon is responsible for the z order mess, no idea how but try to render without it. perhaps the "optimize atmospherics" option can be in help.
about the disappearing - make a tube object, and put it around the point where the water falls. make the tube invisible for the simulator (put it in the exclude list) and create a source helper, that is set to work in brush mode with some discharge about 10-20. select the tube in the new source helper, set the source to affect the liquid channel and set value zero of the liquid channel. when the droplets are crossing the tube, they will disappear, because it is a brush that "paints" over them with value of zero. the discharge controls the speed of disappearing.