Splashes & Foam Flickering

Hey guys,

I am having a series of splashes (objects hitting an ocean surface) and am rendering ONLY splashes, foam and mist - so no liquid (since the actual ocean is mesh based and the liquid wavees don´t exactly match those waves). However: this part works fine and I finally managed to put together the phoenix shaders so it kinda starts looking alright. My problem is that I do get crazy flickering in the results. Yes - I am not working with too many particles (grid count for this small scene below has 3mio cells) but increasing this number in sim (tried many versions here) starts making my sim look totally different again and then also decreasing like splash and foam numbers don´t get me any sims close to my original results.

So I did use the “count multiplier” (5) in the phoniex shaders to increase particle numbers. I am suspecting the count multiplier to genereate this flickering (as randomly generated in-between-particles). Or could this be something difffernt?
(Foam and Splashes are shaded as “splashes” and mist is shaded as “points”).

here´s a quick lowres preview (do not pay attention on the shockwaves - that´s wanted - it´s about the flickering in the particles…):
http://download.martinhausler.com/splash\_lowres\_test.mov
(Link also added below).

Thanks for advice,
Martin :wink:

http://download.martinhausler.com/splash_lowres_test.mov

Ah, this looks like you are using waaaay to much foam pattern force. Try reducing the pattern strength and/or the size of the patterns, in case you need them.

I was talking about the behavior of the particles below, but now saw the flickering too. Do you have the Particle IDs exported in the Output rollout? Gotta double check, but if I remember correctly the count multiplier needed them so the new particles created between the other ones remain in a sequence render.

All Channels (Liquid, splashes, foam, mist) do have ID exported in the outputs. Anything else that could be resposible for the flickering? ( i saw stuff in the “special” rollout of the “output grid channel”…maybe something there that needs to be ticked?

Hmm, no, this isn’t related. If possible, can you send over the scene here or privately to support at chaosgroup dot com so we can make sure it would be working correctly?

So: I did render in highres (all frmaes of the animated sequence…) and the flicker was mostly gone - not 100% but I assume it is related to my intense sun backlighting of the scene- and actually it kinda looks real in motion…!