Hi
I’m having a lot of trouble figuring out how I’m going to animate liquid flowing through these tubes in a lab for a scene in a movie under construction.
Have any of you got any ideas on how I could go around this???
fluid sim perhaps?
Yeah, but is it possible to have a fluid sim go up tubes, around corners and all, not just down.
yeah, why not, give the water a starting velocity and say that the tubes are obstacles…
My own limited experience with fluid sim indicates that what you want is asking an awful lot of the simulator. For instance, when I made a fountain, setting the fluid to start inside the fountain, instead of just above it, caused the sim a lot of trouble. Fluid through tubes might be tricky. (Yet Blendernation recently had a posting of a Brazillian (?) commercial with fluid running out of some simple glass tubes. Might want to check that out.)
Also, remember that the fluid isn’t real fluid! You may not want to expect it to push itself as actual molecules queing up from behind would.
One other thing is the size of your domain in relation to the size of fluid. Your excellent modelling set-up indicates a long run of very small polygons through very small polygons. I hope you have the computer for it!
My suggestion: fake it! Reset the gravity so that positive Z flows up through the view you have; cut the backside of your tubes and drop the fluid in from behind. As you go along, model your fluid where it has filled out the tube. This will take some load off the sim. Expect to make heavy use of the Sequencer, along with compositing and its alpha over node. (And consider more objects in the foreground to hide some of your ‘magic.’)
I would either 1) make the fluid flow through the simulation upside down 2) give your inflow object enough -z velocity (this SHOULD definitely work, if your resolution is enough and your object settings are correct. or 3) fake it with particles. there’s really no need for the fluid to look right inside the tubes, there is very little mixing, etc. and you could just have the particles follow a curve guide
anyway, fluid in tubes is definitely possible: check it out
Thanks guys.
I’ll have to find a tutorial on the fluid simulator because I don’t know much about it, but I was wondering if it would be easier to have a mesh with shape keys travel through the tubes. I’m thinking not though.
hmm fluid sim well keep it short,with a low resolution, make sure that preview res. is really low,half or so of final res.,
Also, dont forget to make your obsticle initshell and not initvolume.
Am I bumping this thread? Anyhow… I’m not of a help right now, but for this kind of setup I have seen the perfect solution somewhere. I will look it up.
Edit:
I’m in luck. Found the tutorial…
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kugyelka/blender/tutorials/texmesh/texmesh.htm
Thanks guys, I feel like I can manage it now.:rolleyes: