I was inspired by this tutorial to try animating a galaxy liquid. I am attempting this by running two identical fluid simulations: one is a mesh with a volumetric material for the ‘space’, and the second is a duplicate that displays particles as objects (in this case, the object is an isosphere). I was hoping to use the Particle Info node in my isosphere material to assign random particles an emissive shader while the rest get a transparent shader so they are invisible. Hypothetically, this would produce an effect of many tiny emissive objects floating in the space fluid. Unfortunately, when I use the randomness output, it causes a flicker effect:
I want the stars to flow with the ‘space’ liquid as if they are suspended in viscous fluid. When I use the particle index to select a portion of the fluid particles, it seems to have much more stable results, but of course it’s the wrong shape. For simplicity, I have recreated my issue using red for the stars and white for the invisible particles:
Random Output - correct distribution, but flickers during animation:
Index output - Incorrect distribution, but more stable during animation:
Does anyone know how I could a) stabilize the Random output or b) use the index output to get a more random distribution? I’ll admit, I don’t quite understand how the Index output works so I might be totally off base here. Hopefully this makes sense!
PS: I cannot include the blend file as new users can’t upload attachments 