Animating waterfall and river?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hello,

I am having troubles with fluid simulation setup for animation. In the scene there should be a waterfall continuing as a river. This is to be a background for an animation. The problem is quantity of liquid and period of simulation. As there should be waterfall and river watering for quite a long time period I guess it would be better to make some kind of loop for liquid. But I do not know how to animate it. Thank for your help and advice.

Maybe this DVD would be useful - http://www.cmivfx.com/product_blender_fluids.asp
Has anybody seen it?

2

Perhaps you could animate the river texture (displacement, normals) instead of using computationally expensive fluids. Cog has written some interesting tutorials about the subject. See http://www.cogfilms.com/ and http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Materials .

3

I know this tutorials. But I am really after the water sim.

4

The DVD might be worth the price then. :slight_smile:

5

Fluid simulation is definitely not necessary to create a waterfall.

I think you will be very interested in the upcoming Blender physics book by Tony Mullen, which will include information on fluid simulations and possibly some additional information/hints/tips/tutorials on how to attain comparable results without simulations.

If I have any sense about that last part it is because I have been sharing ideas and corresponding with Tony on this very topic :wink:

I’ll just say this for now: Tony’s next book is going to be amazing. You will almost certainly learn things you might have never realized Blender could help you create :slight_smile:

Stay tuned!

RobertT

6

I would go for textures too…

7

I did this test very simply with a displacement texture, uv-project, and animated the uv-project modifiers place with a control object.

http://users.evtek.fi/~petrij/waterfall.avi I’ve been meaning to make a tutorial about it.

I’ve used the fluidsim as well, and I can tell you it’s not really the easiest way, especially if you want continueous action for it. Use a displacement textre with a loop in the texture movement to make a river.

This animation is from 3dsmax, but it can be done in Blender as well. I did it with that technique.

http://users.evtek.fi/~petrij/River_AE2.avi
(XVID avi MPEG4, I think)

8

OK, I suppose you are right. I should make my life easier and go on with textures :slight_smile: Thank you.

To Falgor: Your animation is very good and inspiring :slight_smile:

9

yeah, and I recommend to use some particles to make foam and the waterfall itself…