Splashes look huge when simulating, but render tiny/invisible

[SUPERGENIUS]

Hello, I am a pretty new user to Phoenix FD and I'm having some slight issues with splashes in my scene.

When I sim, the splashes all seem to have a uniform size in my viewport. (Which is huge.) The render of those splashes shows them much much smaller. This makes estimating if my splashes are 'good' really tough because I have to render out an entire sequence to see them, rather than getting a sense from my preview within the voxel grid. Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong? (My gpu cannot handle the gpu preview apparently, or it's just not working with my scene.)

For example a splash could take up my entire screen in the viewport, but when rendered is about 5 pixels high. Odd?

Thanks for any help!
AJ

[instinct]

I assume you are using the built in solid mode? If so, you probably need to set the surface level to match your preview settings.

Regards,
Thorsten

[SUPERGENIUS]

Interesting, I'll give it a shot. How does one know the correct settings? Or is it a guessing game?

[instinct]

I have not really done fluid work so far. But depending on the channel you use you simply set it to the same value i'd guess.

e.g. here are the preview settings: http://www.spot3d.com/phoenix20/preview.htm
And here's the surface level: http://www.spot3d.com/phoenix20/rendering.htm

I think these are default settings. So in this case the surface level would be at the minimum temperature that you see in preview.

Anyone with fluid experience might be able to clear that up as i am merely guessing.

Regards,
Thorsten

[SUPERGENIUS]

I really appreciate your posting here.

I read in the help somewhere that surface level can change the sim, and that the default of .5 is the best for simulating liquids. However in the help file you linked it shows surface level at 1000. I did a test and I do seem to get different results based on the surface level. Though none of the tests match the viewport. Hard to nail down a workflow with phoenix for me so far. I'll keep trying though! Thanks again.

[Ivaylo Katev]

I suppose you are talking about the particles, not about the liquid, otherwise can't explain the size difference.
The surface level that Thorsten mentioned affects only the "natural" droplets, that are formed by the liquid, i don't recommend to use different level than 0.5.
The particle group called "splashes" has size that can be changed rendertime, you have a size multiplier in the PHXFoam object, this should solve the problem.

[SUPERGENIUS]

Thank you very much, I will experiment with that today. I really appreciate your help.

Best wishes,
AJ