i want to make a water wheel. a wheel that turns, picks up water and dumps it down a slide. is this able to be done? can a fluid be picked by an animated object? second can i make a bucket that hangs from a pivot point on the wheel, and swings, or do i have to animate that with an ipo.
Yes, this can be done. An obstacle (the bucket) can be animated. Using rigid body physics to make the buckets swivel on the wheel can be done by following the method here:
As for the fluid part, that’s not difficult. Jason van Gumster’s video on fluids actually deals with a water wheel example similar to what you’re thinking of. That’s for sale here:
http://www.cmivfx.com/product_blender_fluids.asp
Otherwise just check the fluid docs. You’ll need an inflow object and an outflow object to keep the water flowing and probably a fluid object to give it some mass to start with.
I think the trickiest thing here is the level of resolution you’ll need. If your scene is big enough to show a river or something, but you want the water to interact convincingly with a comparatively small object like a bucket, you will need potentially pretty high resolution, which takes a lot of RAM.
Use constraints on the bucket. (object panel) You will have to use the “export” button on the buckets unless you find a way to bake it all to IPOs. Also, this will be a huge sim using a lot of ram and taking FOREVER (or most of it)