Create a splash effect in RealFlow
Guest Contribution
In this article, story I’m going to demonstrate how to build an ocean scene; one where the sea has been struck by something large, approved like a meteor or a comet in an action-packed 3d movie.
To make the tutorial easier to follow I’ve used simple geometry, but the same process would work for more complex objects – the only difference would be the number of daemons and the time taken to simulate.
Here we will work with RealFlow’s versatile Crown Daemon, which enables you to create, customise, and fine-tune your crown splashes.
01. Set up your file
Everybody has their own way of storing files, but saving regularly and taking control of your files is vital. You can let RealFlow specify paths for your project, but I suggest choosing a location yourself. I use a second drive, which I back up regularly. Double check that Export Central also points to the same place.
02. Create a plan of attack
Before you start, work out what your pipeline will be; this will save you time later on. For this project I’m going to work in layers. The ocean will be one layer, along with the meteor hitting the surface. There will a large amount of spray, which will form another layer, and the crown splash will be the third layer. This means I’ll import three animated meshes into Cinema 4D later on in order to work on materials and lighting.
03. Add the sea
From this point, we will mostly deal with the big splash section, and to do this we will add a square Standard Particle emitter. I make mine 5×5 and, rather than emitting particles that will need controlling, I use Volume.
You can simply set a Volume in the Emitter tab. The figure you set is the depth of the fluid and for this example a low value is fine; I used 0.3.
04. Create some natural variation
Before we start on the more sculptural crown splash, the water needs to look realistic. For this, I first add a Gravity Daemon with the default settings, then a Noise Daemon, which will add a little natural chaos to the water, providing some organic-looking variation.
To stop the water falling, add an open-topped cube and resize it to contain the fluid particles.
05. Include a reference object
The spray and swell will all be taken care of in a separate pass and simulation, but it’s still useful to reference impact. You can either use the base model from your main 3D app or a piece of simple geometry. It won’t be part of the simulation, so all you need to do is place it in the centre of your emitter and lower it.
06. Add a Crown Daemon
Next, add a Crown Daemon and make sure the bottom of it intersects with the water, preferably sitting quite low down. This enables it to suck the particles into shape more easily.
At this point, hit ‘Simulate’ to see the effect you’ve created (select the Emitter to better see what’s happening). You’ll probably find it’s neither realistic nor attractive, and it probably looks like small-scale viscous fluid, so there’s still a lot to do.
07. Work on splash volume
The next thing to do is to get the volume of the water looking better, instead of using the default paper-thin sheet of particles wrapping round the crown. This is typically scene-scale dependent, but for my example of a 5x1x5 sized Emitter, a crown width (in the Daemon tab of the node) of 0.2 is about right, although I may increase this when I up the particle resolution.
Next page: read on for steps 8 to 14…
08. Make more spikes
The scale of the splash still looks too small, but you can fix this by going into the Daemon tab and double-clicking the Spikes count until it reaches 10. Remember this setting in case you want to readjust it later.
Run the simulation again and you will see that you now have more vertical detail, although the overall shape still needs work
09. Use crown edit mode
Although the Noise Daemon is helping to break things up a little, the splash still looks too clean and regular. Select the Crown Daemon, hit the big Edit button to access all the live viewport tools you need to sculpt the splash. You should see a yellow border around the viewport, which means you are in Edit mode.
10. Sculpt the impact angle
At this point I want to define the overall angle of impact, which for my example will be fairly shallow, so the leading edge of the splash will be pushed further forwards and upwards.
This is a simple job of selecting the appropriate handles around the edge of the Daemon, moving them into place and playing around with them. Run the simulation to better see what you’ve done and keep editing until the impact looks how you want it.
11. Refine the splash
It’s getting there, but the splash needs some refinement, so do another pass of adjustments, and increase the Spikes count if you need to make the splash larger. Mine looks too tall, so I reduce it near the base to make it look more like an inverted cone, keeping the front much taller than the back to give a sense of momentum.
12. Adjust the spikes
Now it’s time to refine the splash’s spikes, and by now you have probably noticed the control handles at the tip of each. Go ahead and move these into position. For this look, I’m following the pattern I chose for the main splash, with much longer spikes at the leading edge.
This, combined with the other daemons, will look great and will also take some of the volume out of the tips. I increase my Spikes count to 15 at this time too.
13. Mesh the particles
Head to the Mesh shelf and add a Particle Mesh, making sure it’s connected to your Emitter in the Relationship Editor. Now adjust the mesh settings to get the geometry you want. This tutorial won’t go into that, but I will say that you want to find a balance between emitter density and polygon size, to get a watery look.
14. Prepping for export
You’ll want to refine the mesh as the defaults will be too blobby and thick looking. I suggest applying one of the Maxwell materials and using Fire from the display shelf to visualise your mesh. Then it’s just a case of exporting to your chosen main app for lighting and rendering. I used Maxwell Render in Cinema 4D, and Fusion for compositing and some colour correction.
This article was originally published in 3D World magazine issue 215. Buy it here.
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