VFXArabia | The VFX creation of Alaa Alnahlawi (علاء النØلاوي)
Water Splash Tutorial:
Hey everyone, I would like to take the opportunity here and post the water splash tutorial. As I mentioned before it's based on Hristo Velev velocity sculpting tutorial here.
I had so much fun developing it. It's simple and powerful especially if you combined it with the flow operator in TP6.
Download the scene file: Download
The Splash tool in action:
For the sake of simplicity and demonstration let's create a setup for only one splash which later can be upgraded and automated to become a tool. We need the following:
- A volume mesh to hold the splash particles.
- A source position that will help us with velocity & intersect direction (can be dummy or point).
- The splash shape mesh (modify it to your needs).
Now in TP we will start by creating the Volume birth set, start with a few number of particles for your system to work in realtime while your figuring out the best setting:
Second we're gonna figure out the direction from the source node to each of the splash particles and use that direction to feed Intersect Operator and Velocity.
The TP setup will contain a distance with a radius enough to cover the splash particles, the direction output will be fed to intersect and velocity direction input. And intersect distance output will have offset and multiplier controller before it goes into the velocity speed. As you can see from the picture above the longer the distance (The Blue lines) the faster the particle and this is the trick behind it.
Finally we trigger velocity only at birth by using particle age condition.
The hardest part is already done now we are just gonna add the finishing touches, here I have a point I would like to shed the light on that this tool is not only for water splashes it can also do explosions, debris and such stuff, so the following steps' settings might vary depending on what you want to achieve:
-First lets add a trail for the splash to give more volume (they will emit trail only for 6 frames)
-Emit secondary splashes when they hit the ground.
-Forces (Gravity & Friction) to be applied to all particles with some randomness. It's also highly advisable to add wind force here, it adds more realism.
-Kill all (main splash + secondary + trail) when they hit the ground.
-Last step would be cranking up the number of particles let's say 100k and adding flow operator (optional if you have TP6) to give the splash the watery look in case you were aiming for water.
Thats it for this tutorial and as I mentioned earlier be creative and mess up with the setting and the shape of the target mesh, create explosion splashes with multiple scales from a bullit to a bomb.
I really enjoyed writting this tutorial, I'm looking forwards for your feed backs. I hope that I explained it well and that you found it helpful, and also refer to the file in case sth wasn't clear.
Regards
Alaa Alnahlawi. ^_^