Hi there,
I saw in a demo reel (http://youtu.be/uZts4WhUkr0?t=44s) [youtu.be] a peice of fluid, being controlled by mesh, but am struggling to find any tutorial or advice on how to do this, so I figured this place would be best! I have only recently started with Houdini, but do check out my blog. I love doing simulations, and this one seems really cool, but if only I knew how to do it?
I would really appreciate it if someone could point me in the direction of a tutorial, or explain to me how to do it!

Thanks
Hungrycomputer

You can direct fluids using a velocity field plugged into the flip solver. To sculpt a velocity field in sops, try making a curve where you want the fluid to flow, then use a polyframe to get the tangents of the curve. Change those tangents to v and then plug that into a fluid source sop, set to stamp points. You can build a nice velocity field here to use to move the fluid along the curve, like in that video.

I'll try and post an example soon.

Here is the file. Things to note are that when using the fluid source sop and source volume dop, it is really helpful to initialize them to what they are doing… in this case we are using them as pumps.

Also note that the velocity volume operation on the source volume is set to copy. This is so that the fluid perfectly follows the curve.


zak

Hi,
I'm reasonably new to Houdini and have an ‘ok’ knowledge of what's going on here. So I've got as far as making the curve and am pretty much stuck now, I hope you wouldn't mind spelling most of it out so I can get the gist of what you're saying

Thanks
HungryComputer

There is a flip fluids masterclass that goes over this and has an example file downloadable from the link below.

Check out the movie below around time ~43 minutes

Good luck!


http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1834&Itemid=344 [sidefx.com]

zdimaria
Here is the file. Things to note are that when using the fluid source sop and source volume dop, it is really helpful to initialize them to what they are doing… in this case we are using them as pumps.

Also note that the velocity volume operation on the source volume is set to copy. This is so that the fluid perfectly follows the curve.


zak

Thanks for the hip file! I'm totally new to FLIP, so I have a few questions:

1. When I run the simulation, the fluids pool at the end of the curve, is there any way to make the water continue off the end of the curve (as if it's coming out of a faucet)?
   
2. Also, is there a way to control how much the water follows the curve? I'd like for the fluid to be attracted towards the curve, but not follow it exactly.
   

Thanks for any help!

It's probably worth checking out the latest flip webinar (https://vimeo.com/182074285 [vimeo.com] - The example files are in the description below the video.). Around 1.55.00 Jeff uses the pop curve force shelf tool to control a flip sim. This should be pretty much what you're after.

badhairday
It's probably worth checking out the latest flip webinar (https://vimeo.com/182074285 [vimeo.com] - The example files are in the description below the video.). Around 1.55.00 Jeff uses the pop curve force shelf tool to control a flip sim. This should be pretty much what you're after.

Thank you for the info! I'll check it out right now.

I ended up coming across Pluralsight's Intro to FLIP tutorial series. It helped answer a lot of my basic questions, I highly recommend it. Here's my scene after a few inital tweaks. I ended up playing around with the flip solver to get some better results: