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I haven't actually tried it but I am almost certain that it wouldn't work. Pin Modifier works great for following morphs in the object that it is attaching to, but the underlying mesh is only moving points around, whereas with the fluid simulation, you are generating completely new and different meshes every frame, so there is nothing to "grab hold of" so to speak.
Alberto:
Thank you for the tremendous effort you are going to in creating this plugin..I am totally in awe of the knowledge and skill that this must involve.
With regards to what has been said so far, I take it that all these effects take place within set bounds, such as within a tank. In the example that Phil has shown with the moving wake, it takes place on flat water. Will it be possible to add simulated waves to this surface also, and can the walls of the “tank" be set so that they do not bounce the waves back into the water sample?
Phil, If you and Alberto decide to charge for your services it would be OK with me. I don't believe anybody's work should go unpaid.
I would be very surprised if that is possible, we cannot do that in Realflow except to add a daemon to kill the particles who touches it and therefore, decrease the level of the water.
Don't forget that is a different object at each frame!
Oh sorry, phil answered on this page...
Yes, all effects take place within a boundary that you can set. So simulating an ocean stretching to the horizon will not be possible, you would need to combine (somehow) the simulation for close range and another approach for the background.
More test renders to share with you - all of the animations shown here were produced starting with a flat domain of fluid and applying keyframed scene forces such as directional force, point forces (attraction and repulsion) and a torque force. You can see also how the inclusion of particles to add spray and foam adds a lot to the realism of the animations.
WHEN WILL IT RELEASE ??????
Wow! I see that Attraction and Repulsion can be keyframed too, right?
) particle emitters will work fine in those simulations? Maybe I lost something, but I see only liquified meshes and not "plain" particle emitters.
A question I got right now (maybe it's the dumbest ever, but dumb people do dumb things!
There is never a dumb question - only dumb answers.
My reference to Particles is not Carrara's built-in particles, but something called Diffuse Particles which is part of the fluid simulator. This adds spray, foam and bubbles to the main fluid mass animation and adds another level of realism. I mentioned it earlier in this thread but is worth repeating.
Having said that the manual does say "particle emitter does work (although you must freeze the particle simulation)." And you could always add a particle animation after doing the fluid sim, so there will be various ways to use the two things together if that is what you want.
I have not used any Carrara particle effects in making these videos.
Uhm... This last info worries me... I hoped I could use normal particles adding to them the attractive forces...
That's perfectly acceptable. I was actually thinking that we could use BrianOrca's Ocean primitive to control the animation of the ship, not the fluids - so they'd never have to include one another. But it was only a guess of an idea. I actually prefer to animate my own motions for ships swaying in a body of water by hand.
Have you looked at particles which spawn other particles which then have minimal velocity on collision, that might give the illusion of sticking to a surface without involving the fluid simulation at all. I am sure there are lots of creative ways to use particles with the fluid sim to give lots of possibilities.
I hope you are right! Well, I just have to wait forma the plugin and find a method!
That shouldn't really be considered an issue, since fluid sims should really be used to sell realism, not as a perpetual scene element.
While the demo videos are perfect the way they are, since we want to really 'see' what's going on, we're really not going to want to use a fluid sim to replace what we already have: all of the various ways we have for animating large fluid masses - like the Ocean primitive, wave modifier, and animating shaders, for some examples. We should be using them for rendering the effects in front of the camera, or specific situations.
If we don't already use specific compositional software, like After Effects, HitFlim, Fusion for three popular examples, Carrara itself allows for very effective composting. Back before I knew of (mostly out of my own fear and ignorance) these ways of post production I have become fairly practiced at doing it all directly in Carrara. The result was that I could take my final renders directly into video editing software and clip them together - post production already being done in Carrara.
While I recommend to any motion artists to pick up at least one of the above choices for post, simply because they are easier and faster at getting the same and better results, I already know that we don't have to if we'd prefer to keep everything within Carrara.
Wow. While it feels like a really long time ago, this was actually done in 2012, and I know I was doing this LONG after this silly test. I was working on making an animated promo for my Mil Dragon 2 animation kit before I was done making it. Something like this would be really simple in AE, HitFilm or Fusion. For me in Carrara, I added a plane with the Carrara Render .png applied. The flare effect was a light with lense flare effects applied to it. Yeah, it was easy to parent the light to the card and then animate it. But I was doing this directly in the same scene as the animated dragon. Needless to say, I had to do a full render of everything to test anything! I knew nothing of common vfx techniques at the time.
The thing is, this Carrara Render rotating card effect with the lens flare (if time was put into perfecting it) could (should) make for an excellent asset to add to any Carrara animation demo - at any time, and anywhere on the scene at virtually any size. So this should be done as an entirely separate asset - a pre-rendered element. This sort of thing is done in a few minutes in a dedicated compositor.
Now back to the main point
In big movie houses, fluid sims became a thing out of need, but like in Carrara, these things take time. Time = Money. The sim is most often used for realism, not as a time saver.
Directors and their DP (Director of Photography) often know each other and how the other likes to work. Camera angles. Frame placements and possible motions. This is particularly important when it comes to preparing shots for post work. Time is everything, and there's always a budget. A really good fluid sim could be recorded to go a long way toward making shots look utterly realistic without having to render costly simulations every time a need arises.
Here's a great example
This VFX demo for Fusion shows how they use a single fluid sim to activate water around a whole fleet of ships. (at 2:58 - 3:20)
Instead of a Fluid Sim, they're using camera footage but the principle is the same.
If you watch more than just the water segment, notice how there are times when we're looking at a 3D scene that looks like everything is wearing a Clay shader and then it looks like they add a light to the scene, then textures, atmosphere, other elements, etc., in most situations those are just additional passes as well as effects driven by passes of the actual beauty pass (full render) of the scene.
Where we see an entire city from above and we see a hundred 3d animated people in the scene, these don't have to each exist in the same scene at the same time. Instead, we can isolate a group of rendered animated people and save their entire animation as a 2D composite element that can be layered into a final composite.
So anyway my point is that we can get the camera right into the simulation and truly use it to benefit the scenes that need it without having to have it run perpetually in a large scene that might just have some flowing water in the background. If we want to use the simulator to make the flowing background water, by all means... do it. But do it all by itself at the proper angle and scale with the proper lighting, etc., then add the result to an element that either resides in the scene itself or is added in post. Keep in mind that remembering to add some beneficial additional passes to each render can become true time-saving magical effects when it comes to post work.
OMG Dart... babble much? I've been watching Christmas Specials and coming in and typing on this... sorry about that! LOL
indead a lot of that can be done in Carrara using animated textures and billboards
It would be a good complement, Philemo! Although it's possible to use the Carrara physics engine to move the objects with the flow, it's difficult to control the results. Moreover, many physical simulations are unstable.
No, but there are some possible workarounds; e.g. the tank can be an object in the scene, but outside the fluid simulation, so it won't affect the fluid.
A tip: the Carrara particles can react to the mesh of the fluid simulation as if it were a solid.
This is an example of mixing the fluid simulation with Carrara physics engine.
Here as promised is my introduction and tutorial for Fluidos. It is only intended as something to get you started and doesn't cover all of the features. It is worth reading the manual that comes with Fluidos which will add all of the functions and detail that you will need. Have fun - it really is quite addictive! And a very Merry Christmas to all!
Wonderful tutorial, my friend! To me, this looks perfect for what I will be using it for. I can't wait to dig in and play, and check out all of the other features that are hidden lower in the tray! ;)
Alberto - this looks stunning! Thank you for all your efforts!
Phil - thanks for taking the time to create these examples and the tutorial (still need to watch it...)
So...I've got a question. This probably won't work, but isn't there a trick to get an object floating on a surface of an ocean by using a Surface Replicator and replicating 1 object? Sorry, visting Mom for Christmas so I have no access to Carrara and my memory is faltering on the subject. So could you use this 'simulation' as the surface for replicated objects? Or would that just create total chaos. Sorry if I'm not understanding.
Excellent work! Monumental!!
I don't think so. Other objects (besides fluid) can affect the fluid simulation, but the fluid simulation will not affect (the physics of) other objects in the simulation.
However, to make a really nice simulation that looks like what you want to do is occurring, we could animate the motions of the object being tossed around by the fluid and include it in the (parent it to) simulation's calculations and the fluid will interact with it as it moves around, so it would (could) give the impression that it's the fluid that's moving the object around.
Of course, like anything 'simulated', it may take a few well-thought-out practice runs to get the effect to look natural. But I think the efforts would be truly paid off in the end
You're welcome!
It isn't useful to use the simulation as surface for replicated object because the Carrara surface replicator itself doesn't respont to mesh changes during animations (unless you create real instances). But, instead, you can use a Particle Emitter to get replicated object after the simulation; particles can do react to changes in mesh.
Thank you, Phil !
Oh, I'm sure there are many possibilities with Fluidos in Carrara I haven't even foresee ! The next step is yours.
I look forward to it! I've been experimenting over the years on ways to mimic fluids without needing such a thing. Having one will put a lot of those studies to great use! Studying efficient techniques of using stuff like this for VFX helps too!
I don't mean to sound impatient, but is it done yet? LOL
As a user of Realflow, I'm dazzled by the possibilities of this plugin usable directly in Carrara.
Inevitably, it doesn't have all the options of Realflow, but the fact of not having any conversion during the importation of a simulation adds an infinity of options which are specific to Carrara.
Thank you Phil for this first tuto and especially an immense gratitude to Alberto who, like Philemo and others, get some great progress of our preferred program: CARRARA!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I hate to contradict the great Alberto but if you put the visualiser object into a replicator, it works! You get the full replicated animation. However I think this would be more for special effects than producing an ocean. If you have animated a specific splash for example, that splash would then happen at regular intervals across the replication and so would not look natural. So in order to get anything like a replicated ocean surface, the animation would need to be quite bland - meaning that you might as well replicate the ocean primitive or some other way of doing it. There is also the issue of the seams, with a fluid sim, it would be virtually impossible to produce seamless tiles for replicating.
So yes it is possible to replicate, but I see it more for a special visual effect than producing an ocean.
Thanks for the explanations. Looking forward to the release.
You're right! I haven't thought that possibility.
Like I said,
wow - thanks for your efforts in this. I've been away, and apparently rust doesn't sleep. simply wow!
cheers, (and happy/healthy holidays to all)
--ms
Just in case people are following this thread and haven't noticed, Alberto has released the Fluidos plugin as a Christmas present to Carrara users in this thread:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/220631/fluidos-plugin-for-carrara