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This page provides a tutorial on creating a simulation of Fruit falling in water.

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Overview

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Units Setup

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Rigid Body Simulation

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Column width 40% This tutorial is focused on the Phoenix FD liquid simulation. For the Rigid Body simulation, you can use the 3ds Max built-in MassFX or any other third-party plug-in. The diameter of the fruits used for this tutorial is about 15 cm, and they fall into the water from a height of ~ 77cm. Column width 60%

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Column width 40% Create a new particle system. Right-click in the Particle View window:. Select New -> → Particle System -> → mParticles Flow to generate a basic MassFX system. Column width 60%

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Column width 40% As no ground collision is required, disable Ground Collision Plane in the mpWorld operator.  Once you are happy with the motion of the falling fruits, bake your PFlow particles into key-framed geometry using the free "Ani Baked" maxscript, or use the simulation as is.  Column width 60%

 

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Phoenix Liquid Simulation

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With the RBD simulation done, we can continue with the second part of the tutorial. 

Overall Setup

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Simulator Properties

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Column width 50% Create a Liquid Simulator that encompasses the animated fruits. Keep the Boundary conditions set to Open. Set the Cell size such that Total Cells is between 500.000 and 2M cells, depending on your machine's performance. Working at a low grid resolution until you've nailed down the general motion of the liquid is a huge time-saver. The final cell size for this example is ~0.12cm. Column width 50%

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Column width 40% To make the splashes more dramatic, increase the Motion Velocity Effect parameter of every fruit geometry to a value of 2. To do so, Select the fruit, Right click -> Phoenix FD Properties:                       As the name implies, Motion Velocity will ijnect velocities based on the movement of your geometry, which in turn will make the interaction between the simulated fluid and your objects more realistic. This value is a multiplier for the strength of the effect. Column width 60%

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Column width 50% Set the Render Mode to Cap Mesh. Set the Ocean Level parameter to the same value as the Initial Fill Up parameter (in the Dynamics tab). Info Phoenix FD's default rendering mode is Mesh - this produces a solid geometry surface. Although it is more realistic, for this example we make an artistic decision to use the Cap Mesh mode instead. Cap Mesh mode, on the other hand, won't produce geometry (and thus, reflections and refractions) on the sides of the simulator. Only the upper liquid surface is rendered. Column width 50%

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Column width 50% Enable Displacement and pipe a PhoenixFDOceanTex into the Map slot. The PhoenixFDOceanTex is a special texture map that can emulate wavy water surfaces. It is easier to controll control and faster to work with than a pure simulation.    Note Disable Vector mode on the PhoenixFDOceanTex. In this particular example, it may produce artifacts in the rendered image if left enabled.     Column width 50%

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Column width 50% No Displacement Column width 50% With Displacement

Lighting and Camera Settings

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Column width 40% A V-Ray HDR light used for ambient lighting. A V-Ray Area Light placed in the upper left corner of the simulator. A background plane with the diffuse color set to black Column width 60%

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Column width 40% For the V-Ray Camera, Enable Depth of Field and set the Bokeh parameters according to your scene requirements.  Column width 60%

 

Materials

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Column width 40% For the fruits, use a simple VRaySSS2 with the preset set to Marble (white). For the Green colored fruit, set the Sub Surface Color to [9, 67, 0]. For the Red colored fruit, set the Sub Surface Color to [254, 5, 0]. For the Orange colored fruit, set the Sub Surface Color to [250, 67, 0]. Column width 60%

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Column width 40% For the water, create V-Ray Standard Material and set the Diffuse to black. Set Reflection and Refraction to white and the IOR to 1.33. Column width 60%

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Rendering

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Column width 40% Set the Noise Threshold to 0, and increase the Render Time to a very large value. This allows V-Ray to render for an indefinite amount of time. You can stop the rendering once you've got a clear image that you're happy with. Column width 60%

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Column width 50% using a LUT file Column width 50% without a LUT file

 

 

 

 

 

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