Animating fluid running down a pipe/tube

[Matt Sugden]

Hi I've been trawling the internet for answers on the best way to acheive this, and so far have come up with nothing very robust.

 

Basically I am going to be animating some complex runs of piping (lots of bends, junctions etc) and I want to show them (in a semi transparent shell) will fluid running through them. It only needs to be basic fluid, in essence an empty pipe the a solid block of liquid filling up the pipe and running along it. but I could do with being able to control the speed of the flow quite precisly, to demonstrate blockages etc.

 

I've looked at:

 

-path deforms (which seem ok for very short runs as I'm limited to 200 height segments and therefore probably only 3 bends in a short pipe at most).

 

-animated slices (not good for round bends or u turns.)

 

-animating a loft, not had any success with this yet though, i can only seem to animate the width of the loft, rather than the length of it.

 

-particle effects, look nice for bubbles, but I can't get a solid 'flow' of fluid, only blobs or spheres instanced geomtry etc..

 

my gut feeling is that the particle effect might be the most flexible, if only I could get a solid 'filled tube' effect.

 

Anyone got any good tips on creating this effect as I'm running out of ideas. I'm using 3Ds max.

 

Thanks

[brynmor530]

I think your best bet is meta particles from a PArray but it will take some fiddling around to get the fluid how you want it. Meta particles always seem to need a fair bit of processing power in my limited experience as well which may become an issue on long pipe runs.

[SandmanNinja]

Don't see why pFlow couldn't do this. But there is a fluid simulator (Real Flow?) that would do it as well, but costs $$$.

 

Grab "Deconstructing The Elements" and they tell you how to do all sorts of stuff.

I did a tutorial from the book where I had rain falling from the sky, hitting a statue, running down the surface and pooling at the bottom.

[mattclinch]

Glu3D pretty good for this, but costs £

[Clanger]

Maybe model the pipes full with geometry then use an animated object that booleans away that geometry making it look like the pipes filling up.

[Dave Buckley]

could you not animate a mask in the water material?? that way you can keyframe the bits where you want the water to slow down etc, although this may look backward when finished.

 

just a first thought, i did see a moving stream tutorial somewhere, and there was a similar one for animated lava

 

just thoughts tho

[jinsley]

...

 

Grab "Deconstructing The Elements" and they tell you how to do all sorts of stuff.

I did a tutorial from the book where I had rain falling from the sky, hitting a statue, running down the surface and pooling at the bottom...

 

+1 Excellent book! Just run over to your local Chapters (or relevant retailer) and sit down and read the sections on water simulation for a while... if you already have a basic understanding of particle systems you should get a good idea how to do what you're looking for...

[Matt Sugden]

to be honest i thought there must be a really easy way of doing this, akin to the slice modifier on striaght runs.

 

I'm pretty suprised that max doesn't have a simpler solution for creating a growing line than particles etc...

[Dave Buchhofer]

I've done it before with Path Deform to 'grow' a cylinder along a spline, with some animated vertex noise, along with an animated map/uvw, it tends to work pretty well

[Dave Buchhofer]

-animating a loft, not had any success with this yet though, i can only seem to animate the width of the loft, rather than the length of it.

with this type, you animate the width in the curve editor down to 0.. it can work, but its kind of a pain in the arse to control.

[Dave Buckley]

bewdy

 

max file attached, just scroll through the time slider

 

took me 5 mins to setup using the same method dave buchofer described

 

really simple and quite effective

 

and questions just ask

[Dave Buckley]

my mistake, just looked at original thread and you've already covered this base

[Matt Sugden]

thanks for trying anyway....

 

the pathdeform tool would be ideal, if it wasn't for the restriction in the lengths caused by having to have enough segments to make it round the corners neatly.

 

i.e. long strech then corner, then long strech then corner. I know I could break the animation into smaller chunks and piece them back together but it's all a bit messy, ideally I'd like a single solution to cover most bases.

Edited July 16, 2009 by Bewdy

[Dave Buckley]

does the water have to fill the entire pipe?? or can a small section of animated water travel through it??

 

if you can use a small section then you maybe able to get away with using the path deform by animating the percentage over time also??

 

i'm interested in this as i'm sure its doable and its annoying me not knowing how

[sbrisson]

I tried Real flow and it is a real good tool. it create a geometry from the particles and then you can create a geometry cache from it so you don't need to get multiples license for render..

 

also.. depends of the camera of course, I suggest you consider to do an animated texture. you could create it from after fx by example, that's what I do for water walls.. if the uv of your pipes are well unfolded it could work fine.

[Paul Twyman]

Hey,

 

Probably a bit late but thought I would post incase anyone still having trouble with this.

Just found this thread because I was trying to do the same thing and have run into the 200 segments limit issue using a cylinder with path deform.

 

It's not ideal as you obviously lose your cylinder properties but you can just copy your 200 segment cylinder along its Z axis a few times and then attach them into one object. This solves your segements issue and works with path deform nicely. Just scale down your big cylinder in it's Z axis if it is becoming the biggest thing in the world.

 

Oh and you probably want to make sure you weld vertexes as well (I did anyway just incase)

 

PS: I find the Path Deform Binding (WSM) gives you a bit more control than the normal one.

 

Hope this helps someone

Edited January 19, 2010 by paultwyman

[Matt Sugden]

This project got shelved, so thanks for the tip above.... as I'll be revisiting this soonish I imagine.

[Frosty]

I only read a part of the discussion above so forgive me if I'm off base. It sounds like what you are asking for would be very easy to do in C4D with an animated sweep.

 

The path would be the center of the pipe and the profile would be the inside diameter of the pipe. It could be as simple as two key frames or many more with velocity ramps or even changing diameter of the pipes. All done with one spline and one circle. I'm sure Max can do something similar.