Maya fluid effects

[many2]

Anybody here has played with maya fluid effects ? I am creating some loops at the moment (using 3ds Max + particle flow) and I would like to know if it would be worth it to move to Maya to do it. Mainly, if you are a Maya fluid effects user, I'd like to know the following details :

a) how fast is the rendering when doing volume rendering of fluid effects ?
b) can you render those effects in mental ray or only with Maya's renderer ?
c) Can you turn any model in a volume to contain fluids ?
d) Any limitation that makes it hard to work with ?
e) Can you simulate the interaction between two fluids ?

Also, if you know any other app with strong fluid simulation and/or volume rendering features, please let me know.

[littlecatalyst]

hey luc we'll have to wait for more maya pros to get here.. but as a novice i can tell you that
a) not sure how to comapre, but see B
b) yes with mental ray, but seen better fluids without it (unless you have loads of lighst too), and that it will defintley make your rendering time a nightmare
c) yeah im pretty sure, but also wait for Dissasembler, DrE, Stuart and some of the other mayagenii to pipe in--

[disassembler]

How do the fluids behave????

Check out Allen Mckay.

Allen McKay (http://www.allanmckay.com/)

[disassembler]

RealFLow has got a great reputation for FLuid Dynamics. I believe its the industry standard, and has a bit of a learning curve.

[fALk]

I am actively using maya for a couple of years and had my hands on the unlimited version for some time in between.
Honestly I think in a small studio setup most of the unlimited stuff purely sucks. Either its slow to preview or extremely slow to render unless you have that renderfarm with 10+ machines. Fluids fall in that category. Cloth and hair in the slow preview category and I find it extremely hard to control all those parameters as an "overall" 3d artist that does the whole whamma from modelling to texturing to animation to lightning to rendering to compositing. For this every complicated step in between is a complicated step too much and it takes aeons to finally find the right parameters for those pesky fluids.
That said I have tried realflow and think its nice and understandable - so the preview speed sucks big time and the reprerendering of a setup is also slowing things down - I still would go with real flow rather then Maya. If you want that big open wave with a splash paya fluids won?t get you nowhere.
The only very cool thing that maya fluids do perfectly are clouds. Have yet to see another thing that renders cloud so nicely - again a renderfarm with 10+ machines comes in handy.
Smoke and Fire do look good after you spend 40+ hours fiddling with the numbers and another 1+ hour per frame to render...

Hope that helps...

[many2]

Big thanks Falk, that is exactly the information I was looking for. I won't go the Maya route then since I do not have lots of time. I continued playing with Particle Flow in 3ds Max and I have some interesting results - I just miss the volume rendering. If only I had afterburn... I did play with RealFlow (with Max 6) a couple of years ago to make some prototyping footage, maybe I should take a look at it again.

[many2]

Thanks Dissassembler for the Allen Mckay link - I found some very interesting ideas over there.

[Stuart]

Been using fluids in Maya since they came out.

answering your questions

a) it's not fast though, depending on your needs it can be tuned to render more quickly.

b) in the most recent version you can integrate mental ray

c) yes

d) speed

e) yes and no. It's complicated

The most complicated shot I've done with fluids is a rocket launch scene. Took me a fuckload of time to sort it and a fuckload of time to render it (on one machine.)

[many2]

Thanks a lot Stuart. You are confirming my first impression as well as what Falk said earlier so I feel like I made a good decision not to work with maya fluid effects (for now at least as I'll probably try it for a personal project in the future).

[littlecatalyst]

hey! what did he say that i didn't? ok i was wishywashy and all but same info, no? :cry:

[edited to add: in the light of all sensitivities these days here at VJF, Many2: i'm totally j/k]

[many2]

Thanks to you too LittleCatalyst ! ;)

Sending good vibes and thanking people is free, so why should I refrain from doing it ! IMHO this is much needed here at the moment :)

[littlecatalyst]

IMHO this is much needed here at the moment :)
hey can u get one of your baby's smiles, and send that to everyone here too?:grouphug:

[Stuart]

more color to the comment

I've been using fluids in my pro gig for a few years now.
It takes quite a bit of futsing to get a sense of what all the handles do. Any shot you are going to take on is going to need R&D time. That being said, they are very powerful and very versatile. You can also do a bunch of cool stuff with 2D fluids and they render very quickly. Best tack, when initially exploring, is to open one of their example fluids and get a strong grip on what makes the effect tick. If you are lucky enough you can tweak one of their examples for your shot.

[many2]

So, there is a 2d fluid engine in there ? I thought I did saw that in a video presentation from the fluid effects programming team, but I wasn't sure. It did look fast, but I thought that maybe it was pre-rendered - looks like it wasn't.

[Stuart]

yes, the 2D engine is essentially the same only, well, it works with 2D voxels. It's a great way to learn what all the geegaws do as you can real-time preview most scenarios. You can even dump your 2D solutions directly into shading maps for some trippy fun. So, experiment away in 2D to tackle the steep learning curve. Then take that info and try something in 3D.