How to Exporting liquid animation as GLTF?

[jordanvarghese (Jordan V)]

I’m new to Blender, and I need to create a liquid animation where liquid flows from the top into a bowl. This animation is intended for use on a website. I found a tutorial by Cleverpoly on YouTube (https://youtu.be/6xsGdEvZGoQ?si=jkKVjVeE6kVU4Q5c) that shows how to create a liquid flow similar to what I need.

However, I need the animation in GLTF format to use it with Three.js. Additionally, I want to control the liquid flow on the website (e.g., play the animation as the user scrolls).

How can I export this animation as an animated GLTF file and implement scroll-based control in Three.js?

Any help is appreciated!

[DamianJ]

@jordanvarghese

Hi Jordan,

The GLTF format cannot do what you want. It can only store animation that is derived from some bone/armature system or shape keys.

A fluid simulation has different numbers of vertices at every frame of the animation and the format best suited to that is Alembic. This can store, efficiently, arbritrary meshes per frame with no understanding/need for the underlying process that created the animation. For instance it can save a mesh with an animated boolean.

here’s a prior thread on getting shape keys into GLTF should you need . . .

Export mesh animation to .gltf / .usdz

Hello everybody. I’m not very familiar with Blender yet and this is my first project. I have been looking for a solution to my problem for a few days, but nothing has worked so far. The issue II animated a kind of “blob” by giving an Icosphere a Displace > Texture Modifier with a cloudy texture. I linked that to an Empty Plain Axes and that in turn linked to a Bezier Circle. The animation consists basically of this blob shape, which differs in a loop. Everything works fine in Blender but when …

However, as I mentioned a fluid sim cannot use shape keys as it has a varying vertex count per frame.

Cheers,
Dj.

[jordanvarghese (Jordan V)]

Thank you so much DJ for the reply, ill check out the thread