FumeFX for liquid simulation

[Steve Green]

I was wondering what the challenges are to get FFX to simulate liquids rather than gases?

I've seen very few FFX driven liquid sims, apart from some Zero Gravity ones, where particles are driven by the sim and meshed.

Are the theories behind them similar or totally different, as it seems a natural evolution to give Fume the ability to do something similar to RealFlow/Glu3D?


Thanks,

Steve

[sitnisati]

Hi Steve,

Well, I think that there are already great liquid sims on the market
that can do the job so there is not too much market left for just another liquid sim tool.
It is not trivial to make a production quality fluid sim and FumeFX cannot be converted to one.
..but who know what the future will bring

Kresimir

[Steve Green]

Hi,

yeah I wasn't sure if they were completely different in terms of simulation.

There are other sims out there, but I get the impression that Glu3D seems to have stagnated, and that just leaves Realflow that I know of (which is way more than I'd be willing to justify)

Do you know of any others that are worth looking at?

Cheers

Steve

[sitnisati]

Blender can do fluids and it's free... but probably not good for production.

Kresimir

[Steve Green]

Hi,

yeah I was just looking at Blender - I see there is a script to get obj sequences out of it, and I've just bought Supermesher which converts OBJ sequences as well.

I'll have to see how it handles...

Cheers

Steve

[jrand]

Hi Steve,

In terms of fluids, it really depends on what you are trying to achieve in terms of complexity.

You can, for instance, use either Box#2 or Rayfire PhysX to do some "cheap" fluid sims simply by wrapping the particle meshes with blobmesh or pWrapper. I say cheap because you are very limited in your particle counts.

You can however simulate fairly convincing viscous fluids with them. Water on the other hand would be a system killer just due to the volume of particles you need to make a believable simulation.

Fume + Krakatoa works very well with more mist like sims, simply because mist is more gaseous in behaviour than fluid, a subtle combination of both Fume/Krakatoa+PhysX/meshWrap may get you something reasonable in terms of watery effects.

On the note of Blender, I seem to remember PartiallyFrozen(Mark Theriault) whipped up a script to get blender fluids into max, it is bouncing somewhere on the internet, might toake a look for it

[phloog]

Sorry to dredge this old thing up, but I was wondering if either A) Afterworks had decided to do fluid sim (unlikely), or B) if someone could suggest other alternatives...here is what I've found so far:

RealFlow: Assuming I am willing to sell my organs on Ebay, I might be able to afford this product. Otherwise not really an option.

Glu3D: Not at all impressed with what I've seen - - maybe good for simulating molasses, but water not so much.

Max alone: If I want particle sprays I'm okay..a spilling glass? Out of luck.

Blender: I am not sure if you can export/import, but I'm having trouble getting it to do nice water.

What am I missing? Or is what I'm missing $4000 for RealFlow?

[jrand]

Well the thing is what kind of water?

You can fake splashes no problem with just pflow.

You can somewhat convincingly fake it too with either TP or Box#2 and a few different layers. Most of it is in your meshing of the systems.

Accurate water either Naiad or Realfow, at the least you could contract out a freelance to setup and sim the system for you if you didn't want to buy a license. Depending on the complexity it could cost you as little as a few hundred bucks.

I won't comment I what I think about Glu3d other than I considered it years ago and they have since missed the boat entirely. For the price of Glu3d and errr...I hate to mention this here since it is kind of a competing product, and of which I actually think does better hydro style fluids than Fire/Smoke, there is also Phoenix :$ http://www.youtube.com/user/ivaylokatev ... yx8I2eA9zk

[phloog]

Actually I just found Phoenix...it's odd that they are doing smoke/fire and extending to other fluids, but Afterworks seemingly has no interest. It would be tough to buy Phoenix JUST for fluids since I have FumeFX, but if Phoenix does fluids AND fire/smoke, then when it comes time to renew/add licenses that might be a good choice.

[sitnisati]

Shame on you John

[jrand]

I know, I know, :$ it does do nice water-like fluids though, smoke and fire on the other hand, IMO not so much.

Sorry Kreso, it won't happen again