How to? Water shooting out of a fountain?

[helpdesk]

I am not sure how best to get VIZ with VRAY to render out a still of a fountain with water shooting from the top and spilling into a pool below.
Any good procedure that may work? I am thinking of purchasing Glu3D but not sure if it is really a good purchase if I am mostly doing stills right now. Maybe just using particles somehow might get the job done, but I know nothing of those either. (opps..particles are only in MAX I believe not VIZ.)
Any help or links to help in this area would be greatly appreciated!
Best regards and Happy Holidays!
Dave

[Da_elf]

ask nicely for someone with max to render a fountain with alpha from different directions and put them on grids possitioned at different angles to make it more 3d

[Dynedain]

Take a look at realflow, their demo is fully functional and has a little bit better results than what I was able to produce in glu3d.

Of course, the interface is insanely counterintuitive and the help files are sorely lacking.

[helpdesk]

I have max at home...But at work is strictly VIZ 2006.
Hmm...realflow may be a choice...I'll have a look at it!

[Morbid Angel]

for a still, one might consider particle flow and blob mesh. That is a cheaper way to go. But real flow will produce the most correct result.

[themaxxer]

do it like ILM and use salt to prduce a waterfall...
some post and voilà.

best regards
themaxxer

[Da_elf]

so far no one has listened to what he said. he only has viz which doesnt have particles

[tricky]

why not just do a google image search and comp it in?

like this:
http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=...in+night&hl=en

[helpdesk]

hmm..those look fun to mask in....!

[Dynedain]

so far no one has listened to what he said. he only has viz which doesnt have particles

That is correct, max particles or pflow solutions can't be used in viz. Glu3d or realflow should be usefull though.

[helpdesk]

ok...I have taken a look at RealFlow, it seems like a great app!
A couple of questions though.
I don't need to use both the generated meshes and the particles (if in MAX)? If so, how are they both used?
If in VIZ, using only the exported meshes, all I have to do is import them and texture them right?

Thanks!

[Morbid Angel]

umm dont know in VIZ but in RF here is what you do, first you simulate particles, then you build mesh based on those particles. Then you export the mesh to max and work with it.

[tricky]

hmm..those look fun to mask in....!

They should be pretty easy to mask in especially if you can get an image of the right kind of fountain at night, then you can use the screen (or is it multiply?) layer in PShop.

[helpdesk]

Morbid Angel wrote:
"Then you export the mesh to max and work with it."

How do I import the *.bin files into max? I don't see anything that imports these other than bringing in the *.sd file importer..?
Did I miss something?

[Morbid Angel]

helpdesk, you need to install rf plugins for 3ds max which can be downloaded from their website, if you have done so you need to go to create panel and from the drop down menu on the very last selection will be nextlimit option. In there you can choose RF Meshloader. Selecting your bin sequence's first frame then clicking the awkward looking create mesh button the mesh will be created and placed at the 0,0,0 coordinates of your scene. Most likly if its an animation you will need to scroll time slider to see the mesh, or if you have exported a single frame lets say frame 35, you will need to go to that time to see the mesh, after that you can eather collapse to editable mesh or leave the meshloader if you are using animaiton options.

SD loader is different, there are three options of sd. SD scene, SD dynamics and SD objects.
SD scene is what you export from max to realflow, to work with.
SD dynamics is realflow's dynamics keying that can be imported into max and applied to your object, like gravity, collosion etc.
SD object is a deformation to mesh which is performed by reaflow. i.e. mesh folding.
Hope that explains a bit.