Maya Fluid Liquid Generation

Authors Notes

Fluid dynamics is a branch of physics that uses mathematical equations to describe how things flow.  In Fluid Effects, dynamicfluid effects simulate fluid motion by solving fluid dynamics equations at each step of time.  The more you increase the container's resolution, the better, but make sure that there are some logical proportions between your container's resolution and the container size.  (Please see below for the proportional values induced).

Why do we even need a Container?

Fluid simulation is still in a very primitive stage; researchers are still trying to develop more complex algorithms for the industry requirements.  To cut down the cost of simulation, rendering and work hours they have developed a concept of generating fluids inside a container which have sections and subsections, not in the whole 3D environment.  So the workstation has to calculate only what's within the container, not the whole of 3D environment.

A Few Basic Pros and Cons of Fluid Dynamics

Maya fluids are good at making real liquid-like fluids, but remember that you don't have much control over the size of the emitting fluids.

Maya fluids are only good when liquid in liquid.

Maya fluids are really bad when liquid in air.  This means you can get a good animation of 2-coloured liquids mixing in a bowl, but don't even think about splashes, waves, froth, surf, sprays, etc.!

You can texture dynamic fluids and have them collide with and move geometry, affect soft body geometry, and interact with particles.

Notes on Tutorial Attributes:
In this tutorial I have given only a few basic methodologies to generate liquid equivalent to the viscosity and other properties of water (h2O); it just flows just like water in a fish tank and bounces back from the collision with the container walls.  It also interacts with the geometry, either driving them or bouncing them back according to the geometry of the rigid body property. 

I find the volume emitter better than Omni because I feel that the quantity of the emission is more, and we can even scale the volume emitter to the required scale and shape.  I have increased the simulation rate scale to 3 so that I can get a faster fluid emission.  I also felt that matched the speed of water.  In the surface attribute I converted the surface to surface render > soft, so that I could get a surface-like output.  The velocity scale and swirl was included so that the water didn't look flat and unrealistic out of the environment, and another supporting parameter was the turbulence for the same reason.

Important Notes:
In this tutorial I haven't mentioned anything regarding texture/shading/colour etc.  For this, I need to get back and do more R&D;, and I will update this tutorial later with 'Maya Fluid Liquid Generation Tutorial: V2'.

# Open New Scene

# Turn on Dynamics module

# Go to Fluid Effects > Create 3D container (options)
Type 100 in X resolution
Type 50 in Y resolution
Type 100 in X resolution
Type 10 in X Size
Type 05 in Y Size
Type 20 in Z Size
Close Window

# Go to Fluid Effects > Add > Edit Contents > Emitter (options)
Turn Emitter type to Volume
Turn Density rate (voxel/sec) to 2
Ignore Heat and Fuel parameters
Turn Fluid Drop off to 2
Close Window
Select the Fluid Emitter Node

# Go to Attribute Editor
Go to Fluid Emission Turbulence
Type 0.182 for Turbulence Speed
Close Window

# Select Fluid Node or Container
Go to Fields > Gravity (options)
Type -1 in Y Directions
Let X and Y be 0
Close window

# Select Fluid Node or Container

# Go to Attribute Editor

# Turn ON "Dynamic Grid" for Density and Velocity
Ignore Temperature and Fuel

# In Display Leave Voxel Quality as Faster (default)

# Go to Dynamic Simulation TAB
Enter the following:
Gravity = 20
Viscosity = 0
Friction = 0.01 or 0
Damp = 0
Simulation rate scale = 2.350

# Go to Content Details TAB > Density
Enter the following:
Density scale = 0.5
Buoyancy = 0
Dissipation and diffusion = 0

# Go to the velocity TAB
Enter the following:
Velocity scale = 0.3 for XYZ
Swirl = 1.00

# Go to the Turbulence TAB
Enter the following:
Strength = 0
Frequency = 0.2
Speed = 0.182

# Ignore the Following TAB:
Temp
Fuel
Color
Grd cache

# Go to the surface TAB (very important!)
Turn ON surface render
Turn ON Soft surface

# Shading TAB
It's up to you to work on it any way you like.

# Go to the Shading Quality
Enter the value 2

# Go to Lighting TAB
Turn ON self shadow and real lights

# Ignore texture properties

# Go to Render stats
Turn OFF Visible in Refractions
Turn OFF Visible in Reflections
It's not mandatory, but you may save some time during the work.

Tweak and perform trial and error for the Simulation, Texturing and Shading.

Good luck!  Any questions are welcome.

' '

Video

You can see this effect in motion by viewing the movie below
Duration: 15seconds - File Size: 8.49mb

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