Can anyone suggest a way to clip a Maya fluid in 3D?
It appears the Clipper feature doesn’t work with fluids?
I have a fluid being emitted at a planar surface. I want to render the fluid as a separate pass but this is resulting in some parts of the fluid that should be occluded by the surface becoming visible. It’s not possible to use the surface’s alpha as a matte, as the rest of the fluid is in front of it.
I could possibly do a matte pass with the fluid converted to geo, which I could then use a Clipper on (in theory), then use its alpha in comp. But this seems like a convoluted hack. Ideally I’m looking for a solution like the Clipper that works with fluids in 3D. Anyone?
This is a smoke like fluid so cannot be rendered as geo.
In theory, as I mentioned, I could render a pass with the fluid as geo – which can then have a Clipper applied – and use the alpha from that to mask my fluid in post.
(A fluid rendered as a surface directly also does not work with a Clipper. This option seems to generate quasi-geometry that also does not work with a Clipper)
Unfortunately though the fluid > poly conversion feature is pretty basic and generates geo that does not encompass the full fluid render, so I’d be losing pixels around the edges. Although there is some control over tessellation I don’t see any way to “inflate” the fluid as I’d need to.