There’s this really neat example scene from XSI 6 (as in the thread title) that, frankly, I just cannot make heads or tails of. It appears to do several things which I cannot recreate from scratch:

Odd thing number 1:
Although it has a Particle Cloud with a FluidOp, it has two Emitters which seemingly are not Fluid Emitters (they have Generation = Surface, and Rate can be set.)

Odd thing number 2:
Changing any of the settings of those two emitters makes no difference in the simulation.

Odd thing number 3:
There seem to be two initial states (fixed number particles in the volume of a cube to start with), and yet there are no initial states to be found in the Explorer.

I’m trying to understand this scene because it’s the only example I can find of pouring a fluid into a container, with the fluid filling up the container as expected. The only other fluid examples or tutorials I’ve been able to locate just bounce fluids off of objects, or create a flat oil slick, etc. They don’t “pile up” and fill a volume, nor do the fluid sims I’ve tried creating myself.

All I want to do, really, is pour some coffee into a coffee cup.  :) And since ICE doesn’t do fluids (yet), I seem to be stuck with the standard particles.

I’ve searched everywhere under the sun (I think), but if anyone could provide, or point me at, some additional info hiding somewhere which might shed some light on this strange scene, or the above task in general, I’d be most thankful.

-Jim

Basically this is a very old scene using the very old FluidOP design.
Since both the fluid engine and the particle engines use ‘ptypes’ they share the same geneal PPG set. But the spdl logic wasn’t smart enough to ‘swap out’ the ‘Emission Tabs’ for the ‘FluidOp tabs’ (and visa versa) for context. So both are there redundantly.

So the ‘FluidOp tab’ has no effect on a regular particle system and the ‘Emission tab’ will have no effect on a Fluid. So to get ‘Rate-like’ behavior from the FluidOp you want to play with ‘Slave Ratio’ and ‘Mean Distance’ to get ‘more particles’ and ‘closer together’ in the same area. Its a little like Resolution in RealFlow. And so the ‘Emission tab’ will do nothing for you here.

BTW if you do a Creat>Particles>Fluid you should get a default Fluid setup.
You will see its built with a ‘state’ or filled volume as well.

You may just find it easiest to adapt that scene to your context if its already ‘close’ to what you want.

Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense now. :)

I also discovered why I wasn’t getting the same “fill up a container” behavior (courtesy of an example scene from Softimage suport)… I was using a disc fluid emitter instead of a cube. The disc and square emitters generate particles continuously, and apparently do not allow the fluid particles to “build up” and fill a volume. I wonder if this could be a bug? I could find no mention in the docs of such a distinction.  Anyway, with a cube emitter it works fine.  :)

-Jim

[quote=jgjones;11308]Thanks for the explanation! Makes sense now. :)

I also discovered why I wasn’t getting the same “fill up a container” behavior (courtesy of an example scene from Softimage suport)… I was using a disc fluid emitter instead of a cube. The disc and square emitters generate particles continuously, and apparently do not allow the fluid particles to “build up” and fill a volume. I wonder if this could be a bug? I could find no mention in the docs of such a distinction. Anyway, with a cube emitter it works fine. :)

-Jim

This happens if you pour them into a container too?
Bug or not - I suspect this sim system would be replaced before it would be fixed.

[quote=rconover;12168]This happens if you pour them into a container too?
Bug or not - I suspect this sim system would be replaced before it would be fixed.

Yup. Emitting from a disc or square doesn’t work like a cube at all… the particles just collect in a very small group at the bottom of the container, no matter how many you pour in.

ICE fluids, whenever they appear, will no doubt be better.