Water spill effect

Jeroni

Hi, I need to produce an effect where water spills out of a bottle and forms a specific shape on the table.  Any suggestions as to how I should tackle this?  I am enclosing a picture of more or less what I need although the water needs to end on a particular shape.
Thanks!!

MarcDraco

Personally, I'd probably try to do this in camera depending on the shape you need that might be easy or virtually impossible: fluid simulation is one of the most difficult there is (there are big prizes on offer for accurate models of things like waterfalls). Blender has fluid simulation but getting the water (or some other fluid) to be constrained like this isn't something you are going to do quickly.
I have done something with particles driving displacement maps but the quality isn't up to the standard I would personally use since it looks CGI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0L70kjiXj8

AxelWilkinson

Yeah, I would probably look into painting the shape you need onto a surface with some sort of water resistant material, pouring the water in slowly to fill the shape, and comping that into my final shot with the table.
Doing it digitally, I would steer away from any sort of particle effect.  I would probably create an alpha of the final shape, the work backwards to create the spill, by using Erode White or other alpha manipulation tools to create the animation.  Then, use displacement to create the actual watery effect.

Jeroni

Thank you.. i will do some testing.

CalebK

Those screenshots and videos look pretty cool!

Triem23

Look at caustics as well.. Workflow is basically the same as setting up a displacement map, but... Using caustics. Use a copy of your bg as the bottom surface.