Water Bucket

[aaver]

I've had this idea for a while, but never came around trying it out.

 

With some texturing I think it could be rather convincing. What do you think?

 

 

 

[attachmentid=10616]

M01b.mov

[KenH]

Nice. It could use some ripples. I think that might complete the effect.

[steve392]

Very nice movement ,but I agree with Ken on the ripples

[arkaos]

That's frickin' cool! What did u use? A rig with dynamic constraints? Do share!

[pleavens]

I've had this idea for a while, but never came around trying it out.

 

With some texturing I think it could be rather convincing. What do you think?

 

 

 

[attachmentid=10616]

Dynamic boolean?

[nf1nk]

I've had this idea for a while, but never came around trying it out.

 

With some texturing I think it could be rather convincing. What do you think?

 

I think I would like to know how you did that I have ome bottles that I would love to put liquid inside

[aaver]

Ken & Steve:

Yes, there will be ripples. That's the texturing I was referring to ;-) I could do it with my external program and it would be easy to make it photo real, but since I'd like to offer this effect to the movie project, I might have to find an A:M way to do this. Definitely possible, but I will have to think some more.

 

Phillip:

Dynamic booleans would also do the trick. Here the water surface is a simple square patch attached to one bone with a dynamic constraint. The water suface outside the bucket is hidden by a material.

 

Mark & Nathan:

I'll upload the project file as soon as I'm at my office.

[ddustin]

Anders,

Very nice as usual.

 

David

[Bendytoons]

The water suface outside the bucket is hidden by a material.

That's really clever. Are you using a material effector linked to the bucket?

 

Nice start on the effect, btw.

[Kamikaze]

Nice use of D.C. I like the way you think...

 

Michael

[bentothemax]

That looks great, just a bit of an evniorment to reflect and some ripples, and it would be complete

 

 

Nice job, i wonder how you did that.....

 

 

Ben

[Dhar]

This is awsome.

 

I'm gonna have someone I know at Dream Works whose project is strictly water dynamics take a look at this. I'll post her critique.

 

A:M doing the work of Dream Works - Who would've thought

[heyvern]

My bag of goop is very jealous...

 

... dynamic bone... hidden with a material... just trying to work this in my head before I see the answer...

 

I am intrigued.

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[aaver]

Now with ripples, but I'm not entirely happy with them. They are still too regular, I think.

 

[attachmentid=10654]

 

I've attached the project file for those who want to see how it's done. Everything is automated. Just reanimate the bucket and "Simulate Spring System".

 

[attachmentid=10655]

M03.mov

WaterBucket.zip

[KenH]

Yeah, you'd nearly need to get a real bucket of water and see what happens. Not bad though.

 

Also, the shadow is moving with the water!

[Paul Forwood]

I'm saying, 'WOW', way too much at the moment but that is such a cool solution I've got to say something.

 

That's amazing, Anders!

[aaver]

[...]Also, the shadow is moving with the water!

 

Cool, or maybe not... ;-)

 

I guess the bucket is too thin.

 

 

 

Thanks, Paul :-)

[Dhar]

I've been discussing this WIP with a friend of mine and these are the points that have been raised:

 

What are the dynamics if:

- the bucket is tipped over just a little bit

- the bucket is tipped right over onto its side

- the bucket is raised/lowered while also moving sideways

- the level of liquid is changed (like someone is drinking the

liquid through a straw)

 

Could you enlighten us a bit aaver?

[aaver]

I've been discussing this WIP with a friend of mine and these are the points that have been raised:

 

What are the dynamics if:

- the bucket is tipped over just a little bit

- the bucket is tipped right over onto its side

- the bucket is raised/lowered while also moving sideways

- the level of liquid is changed (like someone is drinking the

liquid through a straw)

 

This effect is of course cheating as always and it certainly has it's limitations, but I think it can handle some of your "requests" ;-)

 

- the bucket is tipped over just a little bit:

Shouldn't be a problem. This case is not fundamentally different from what I've done as long as the motion is moderate and the water stays inside the bucket.

 

- the bucket is tipped right over onto its side:

Will of course not work. Here you have to use a physics solver for a convincing result. If you are a great animator you can always key frame it.

 

- the bucket is raised/lowered while also moving sideways:

No problem. See the first case.

 

- the level of liquid is changed (like someone is drinking the

No problem. See the first case

 

But download the project file and see which of the cases you think it handles convincingly. :-)

[rickh]

I had tried to get exactly this effect a while ago and failed. I never thought of just using a spherical combiner with Global Axis set to make the water surface dissappear outside the bucket. It really is a brilliant solution. It does its job perfectly.

 

Just some ideas that might help. I haven't tested these yet, so they don't necessarily improve your model.

 

- To stop the water surface appearing out the bottom of the bucket (low water + high bucket angle), just add an extra gradient combiner to your WaterMask. Set Y Start to 0.2 cm. Set End Y to 0.1 cm. Leave default Attribute 1. Set Attribute2 the same as the Spherical Combiners Atribute 2.

 

- To make water, start off with 100% transparency, some specularity, perhaps some reflectance, and most importantly some Index of Refraction (say 1.1). Once you have refraction, transparency can be 100% because you see the water by the way it distorts light. It can look stunning.

 

- The Ripples. Ripples in a glass or bucket often end up being standing waves which means that if the water surface is made out of concentric rings, just making alternate rings move up and down would probably look great. By this, I mean that when odd ring numbers move up, even ring numbers move down by the same amount. I was thinking of something like using expressions to move the rings sinusoidally (constant frequency) with an amplitude proportional to the absolute angle of your bone 2 from the vertical.

 

Also leaving a very slight movement in the surface when at rest would make the water look more interesting.

 

- I noticed that the fit of your Spherical combiner to the bucket was not great (I know it is just a test). Here is an easy way to get a perfect fit:

 

Start a new model and make a sphere, say, 50 cm in radius and with lathing set to 12.

Add the bucket and the sphere to a choreography. both should be exactly at the origin.

Distort the sphere using the X, Y and Z scale and the Y translate for best fit.

Make sure that sphere just touches the inside of the bucket top and bottom.

Make sure the sphere doesn't penetrate outer walls of bucket in the middle.

Now just use figures from the sphere directly in the Spherical combiner:

 

Ring 1 size = Diameter of Sphere Model (in this case 100cm)

Ring 2 size = Some bigger number, say 1000 cm

Y Translate = sphere's Y translate in the Choreography

X, Y and Z Scale = sphere's X, Y and Z Scale in the Choreography

 

Done. The spherical combiner and the bucket will now be perfect fits.

 

Thanks again for your fabulous idea for the water. I am looking forward to making my own bucket project work now (finally).

 

Richard.

[aaver]

Some great suggestions, Richard!

 

Thanks,

/Anders

[Dhar]

This water bucket idea is so good it should be a part of A:M's advanced/Bootcamp excercise - me thinks.

 

I'll DL the project tonight and investigate the possibilities/limitations.

 

Very intriguing indeed

 

Thanks again.

[Dhar]

I see the action, but I don't know what the constraints are.

 

Could you explain the bones relationships to one another? When one moves what constraints did you use to affect another? Why so many bones? And why are there so many keyframes in the timeline if it's a constraint?