How to Make a Fluid Animation in After Effects, Blender and Maya Fluid Effects

In this article we will teach you how make a fluid animation with various programs. Fluid simulation is a very interesting topic. Usually, these simulations are a lot of fun and allow users to create amazing designs. Many of the programs have built-in fluid simulations that are pretty good. But in many cases, it is not easy for a novice to use them, so let's see how to create liquid and smoke simulations yourself.

Making a fluid animation in After Effects

Making fluid and liquid animations Creating liquid animation in After Effects can seem overwhelming, but it’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. After Effects offers a wide variety of effects that give users the power to simulate almost anything. This time, we’ll focus on creating a graphical, “cartoon-like” liquid animation with just a few effects.

Wuizás you may be interested in:

Get the project files

Follow the steps below: How to Speed ​​Up Rendering in After Effects

• Step 1: download the project files.
• Step 2: Once the download is complete, be sure to unzip the file if you haven't already. You should end up with an After Effects Liquid Animation folder.

We'll cover using Wave Warp to simulate the movement of a liquid, as well as using Turbulent Displace and Drop Shadow to really sell the effect. We'll also animate liquids and some text to create a fun animation! wave animationWe've got a little more setup in the files so you can focus on making some sweet waves. Let's get to it!

File and Effects Settings

Follow the procedure below:

• Step 1: In the file you should see a text layer, with two shape layers underneath it. Below that is a bullet layer, another text layer, and a .jpg and a solid at the bottom. Don’t be scared by the number of layers; we’ll focus on three layers.

• Step 2: Turns the Visibility of each layer by clicking on the little eye icon next to each one. This will allow you to identify which layer is which object in the composition.
• Step 3: Right off the bat, we'll add our first and most important effect, Wave Warp.
• Step 4: select the blue wave layer.
• Step 5: go to the panel Effect on the top toolbar.

• Step 6: go to Effect > Distort > Wave Warp. It should be all the way to the bottom.
• Step 7: click Wave Warp.
• Step 8: A new effects control panel should appear on the left. If it doesn't, click on the option Effects control.
• Step 9: at the Effects control, you should see an effect Gradient RampAs well as Wave Warp that you just applied. Ignore the gradient ramp as it has already been applied and scroll down to the wave warp options.
• Step 10: changes the wave height to 35.
• Step 11: change the wavelength to 250.
• Step 12: Now, here's the interesting part. Press the space bar on your keyboard to play your animation. You've already made it. a little lively water!
• Step 13: In preparation for the next step, tap the Visibility icon next to the wave base layer to hide it.
• Step 14: Tap the Visibility icon next to the blue wave layer to hide it as well.
• Step 15: Waves have foam at their tips, so we'll create an almost identical foam layer underneath our blue wave. We could make a whole new layer from scratch, but let's use the layers we already have. Select the blue wave layer.
• Step 16: press Cmnd + D (Mac) / Cntrl + D (Windows). This will duplicate your blue wave layer right above it.
• Step 17: Since it is invisible at the moment, press the icon Visibility to activate it

• Step 18: in the panel Effects control From this layer, you will have the same effects as the layer from which it is duplicated. Select the Gradient Ramp effect.
• Step 19: press Delete on your keyboard to make the layer a solid color.
• Step 20: go to Fill in the toolbar.

• Step 21: click on the box on the right of the word Fill.
• Step 22: A color picker appears. Slide the picker to the top left to make it pure white or enter # FFFFFF in the hexadecimal code box.
• Step 23: click Accept. The coat is now solid white.
• Step 24: select the layer name, blue wave 2, in the layer stack.
• Step 25: press ROI (Mac) / Enter (Windows).
• Step 26: rename the layer to White Wave.
• Step 27: Click anywhere on the white wave layer in the layer stack and drag it below the blue wave layer.
• Step 28: We'll add a couple of effects to the white wave layer to make it behave a little differently than the blue wave layer and therefore look more organic. Make sure the white wave layer is still selected.
• Step 29: go to Effects > Perspective > Drop Shadow.
• Step 30: click Drop shadow.
• Step 31: in the panel Effects control, click the box next to Shadow color.

• Step 32: In the hexadecimal code box, enter #5B4300 or slide the color selector to a medium-dark brown.
• Step 33: click Accept.
• Step 34: changes the opacity al 25%.
• Step 35: changes the smoothness al 180%.
• Step 36: changes Distance to 0%.
• Step 37: changes the steer axle truck at 290 degrees.
• Step 38: Now, let's add one more effect to give the foam a "smeared" look. Go to Effect > Distort > Turbulent Displacement.
• Step 39: click Turbulent Displace.
• Step 40: en Effect controls of turbulent displacement, change Quantity and 15.
• Step 41: changes the Evolution at 200 degrees. Your new effects should look like the screenshot below. That’s it for the effects! This was the bulk of the exercise, and now it’s down to some simple animation to finish off the project.

Animating the waves

For the wave animation follow the steps below:

• Step 1: press the icon Visibility next to the blue wave layer to turn it back on.
• Step 2: Also activate the Visibility of the wave base layer.
• Step 3: select the blue wave layer.
• Step 4: press the key P for the attribute to appear Position.
• Step 5: moves the playhead to 00; 00; 00; 25.
• Step 6: Click on the stopwatch next to the word Position to activate the keyframe. This will set an initial keyframe wherever the playhead is.
• Step 7: moves the playhead to 00; 02; 05;
• Step 8: changes the Position to make it 960, 1077.
• Step 9: select both keyframes.
• Step 10: press F9 to facilitate access to them for the animation to be fluid.
• Step 11: Blue wave ready! Now select the white wave layer.
• Step 12: As before, press P for the attribute to appear Position.
• Step 13: moves the playhead to 00; 02; 05;
• Step 14: Click the stopwatch to start keyframing.
• Step 15: change the attribute Position to make it 960, 470.
• Step 16: moves the playhead to 00; 02; 07; so it is slightly offset from the other wave.
• Step 17: change the attribute Position at 960, 1077.
• Step 18: select both keyframes.
• Step 19: press again F9 to get another Easy Easy.
• Step 20: moves the playhead to the beginning, 00; 00; 00; 00.
• Step 21: Press the space bar to play your animation. Waves come in and out!

Text animation

In this case we will work with text. These are the steps to follow:

• Step 1: Last detail, we will animate the top text layer to fade out as the wave descends. Select the top text layer.
• Step 2: go to Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Gaussian Blur.
• Step 3: click Gaussian blur.
• Step 4: if the playhead is not at the beginning, move it to 00; 00; 00; 00.
• Step 5: Click the stopwatch next to Blur to activate the keyframe.
• Step 6: moves the playhead to 00; 00; 02; 08.
• Step 7: change the blur to 100.
• Step 8: select both keyframes.
• Step 9: press F9 to Easy Easy in both.
• Step 10: Now we'll also add a fade to the text, and we're done! Return the playhead to the beginning. Press T on your keyboard to bring up the opacity options.
• Step 11: press the stopwatch to start the keyframe.
• Step 12: moves the playhead to 00; 00; 02; 08.
• Step 13: change the opacity to 0%.
• Step 14: select both keyframes.
• Step 15: press F9 for Easy Ease on both.
• Step 16: Finally, move the playhead to 00; 00; 03; 10.
• Step 17: press the key N to trim the timeline so that when your animation is displayed and rendered, it's about three seconds total.

All done! Now you know how to make a fluid animation with After Effects, a cool wave animation that uses only the wave warp effects with a few other effects to sell the look. Try combining Wave Warp with different shapes and masks to create different liquid shapes or change the color of the solids you're working with. You can even add bubbles with some of After Effects' effects, simulate Effects, or use a track matte to contain liquids within text.

Download After Effects Now.

Blender Fluid Simulation

With Blender you can also achieve excellent fluid animation, in the next sections we will explain how to do it. The liquid blender simulator can be really confusing at first sight. But let's get started. Follow our steps and everything will be fine.

1. Creating a Liquid Simulation Domain in Blender

First of all, we need to create boundaries for the liquid to contain. We can't just put it anywhere in Blender. So this step is very important as boundaries for fluids should always exist. For these boundaries, we need to use an object. You will find any object, but a small sized cube would be perfect for now.

Now with this box checked, go to Physical properties and activate fluid simulation by clicking on the name. Then, under Fluid Type, choose the Domain. This means that it will be intended for fluid simulation. You will see the changes in the cube immediately.

Now we need to change the domain type from gas to liquid. This is important because it won't work with liquids at this point. The cube should turn solid after that.

We also need to change some other settings. First, we need to activate the option Outreach. This one is important because it decides how our liquid feels and looks. There are three presets available including for honey, oil, and water. We will leave it at the default: water.

Also enable the neighbor mesh option. This will enable a fluid mesh which we will create later.

And the last thing is to check in the section Cache if you Use cases is set to Reproduction and not in Structure. It should be this way by default, but it is useful to check. Otherwise you would not be able to see the liquid in real time.

2. Creating a Liquid Simulation Flow Object in Blender

Now that we've created the bound object for our Blender liquid simulation, we need to add the liquid itself. For this, we also need to create an object that will generate liquid in the scene. The best object for this right now is probably a UV sphere.

After creation, place it somewhere in the cube. Turn on the rays X [Ctrl + Z] or wireframe viewport shading to help with this.

Now enables fluid physics simulation on the sphere in Physical properties. But this time change the Type to Flow.

After that, change the Flow Type to Liquid, because that is the one we want to deal with. Also change the Flow Behavior to the Flow option which will add fluids to the simulation.

The objects are ready and you should be able to play the animation [space bar] and see the fluids flowing. But there's a good chance that nothing will happen. It seems like a bug. But don't worry, because it's easy to fix.

All you need to do is select the Object domain again and change the settings Resolution Division. You can change it to whatever you want and then go back. This will just update the simulation and fix the problem. Also make sure your animation starts from the exact frame №1.

If you did everything right, the domain object should become transparent and you should see the fluid particles appearing around the flow object in X-ray mode.

You may want to know: 10 Types of Design Software You Should Download

3. Simulation of liquids and their configuration

Finally, you should be able to play the animation now by pressing the [space bar]. This should start calculating the physics. This can be heavy on your system and especially your CPU, so depending on how good it is, it may take some time to calculate. Although after the initial calculations are done, the next times would be much faster.

As you can see, the result is not very detailed. The water is quite low in poly and is displayed in large “chunks”. This is due to the Resolution Division setting in the Domain objectThe higher the value of these settings, the more detailed your liquid will be and vice versa.

But of course this will also change the calculation times greatly. The minimum value is 6 and it looks quite funny. It doesn't really look like liquid, but more like jelly. The calculations are practically instantaneous though.

The default value of 32 is more of a preview value. It's high enough to see the minimum amount of detail and an approximation of how the liquid will behave. But it's always recommended to really boost this setting before rendering. This shows how much better it looks by only increasing it to 50 divisions:

Changing the resolution divisions to 100 resulted in a really nice simulation quality which you can see below. It has by far the most details and little droplets everywhere from the liquid hitting the ground and walls. But it was very slow compared to the others. Although people usually go even higher for final renders.

The other important setting is the Timescale, just below the Resolution Division. It controls how fast the liquid is simulated. That is, how much it changes between each frame. The default is 1.0 and all the previous results were with it. Here is the result of the Resolution Division 50 calculation, same as the 2 screenshots above. But with the Timescale set to 2.

If you compare, you will see the difference. The one with the larger time scale is much further away in the animation, there is more fluid and it is already calmer. Even though it is the same frame of the animation.

Typically, people decrease the timeline value. This will slow down the animation, but each frame of the animation will be more detailed. Some people use this to increase the level of detail in their final render animation. Sometimes, you can even decrease the timeline value a lot and then, in post-production, increase the speed of the animation to make it look realistic.

4. How to add collision objects to fluid simulation

Just simulating simple liquid in a box isn't that interesting. It's much better when there's something for these fluids to interact with. Some other objects they can wrap around.

To add an object like this, first create one. It can be any mesh you want, absolutely no restrictions. So if you look at our Blender Physics Simulation, you'd guess that we should probably add Collision Physics to it, because that's the one that interacts with other physics.

That's not right, unfortunately. Because the liquid passes through the object. The same is true for active and passive rigid bodies.

What we really need to do is add a Fluid Physics to the object again. But this time we will choose the Type Effector.

This means that the object will be affected by our fluids. And by default the Effect Type is set to Collision and that is exactly what we need. Now it will collide with our object. You may need to change the Resolution Division again and force again to update the simulation. And then it should be done:

Our fluid hits the mesh and wraps it very well.

5. How to simulate smoke

There's more to fluid simulations in Blender that only liquids. I mean, we're talking about smoke simulation right now. So let's create a little scene with smoke simulation.

Basically, it's the same as the liquid simulation we did before, we just need to change some settings a bit. That's why we're even going to use the same scene I had: a big cube and a sphere inside. First of all we want to change the domain type of our cube back to gas as it was by default.

After that you also need to change the flow object's flow type from Liquid Flow to either Smoke or Fire + Smoke.

Once this is done, you can play the animation [space bar] and see how smoke begins to emerge from the sphere and interact with the “roof” of the cube.

The same rules as Liquid Simulation apply here as well. Meaning that the time scale will increase or decrease the speed of smoke appearance and movement and the resolution division will increase or decrease the level of detail.

And of course, you can create effector objects that will interact with smoke just as they did with liquids.

Download Blender now.

Maya Fluid Effects

Maya Fluid Effects is a technology to simulate and realistically represent fluid motionFluid Effects lets you create a wide variety of atmospheric, pyrotechnic, spatial, and liquid effects in 2D and 3D. You can use the fluid effects solvers to simulate these effects, or you can use fluid animated textures for more unique and distinctive effects.

Fluid Effects also includes an ocean shader for creating realistic open water. You can float objects on the ocean surface and have those objects react to the movement of the water. You can create the following types of effects with Fluid Effects:

1. Realistic atmospheric effects including clouds, fog, mist, steam and smoke.

2. Pyrotechnics, such as fires, explosions and nuclear explosions.

3. Viscous fluids, such as molten lava and mud.

4. Open waters, such as calm or rough oceans with white caps and foam.

Examples of fluids

To help you create your own fluid effects, Maya includes a set of sample fluid files. These files contain the fluids, geometry, shaders, lights, and environments that allow you to quickly create the effects you want.

Also included with the example fluid files are predefined initial states (or caches) that describe the initial starting point of the fluid simulations (for example, a cloud), attribute presets that define attribute settings for specific effects, and note information about the nodes in the example.

This can help you determine how each example can be used. You can import these example files into your scene, play them back, and render them unaltered, or you can modify them to customize the effects. To access the example fluid files, initial states, and presets, select Fluid Effects > Get Fluid Example.

Create dynamic fluid effects

When you play the simulation, Maya applies the fluid dynamics solver to the values ​​in the container, calculating new values ​​at each time step and replacing the old values ​​in the grid with the new ones.

Explosions, flames, smoke and lava are examples of effects you can create as dynamic fluid effects. You can also create fluid effects that look and behave like liquids such as water. To create a dynamic fluid effect:

Step 1: creates a container of liquid.

Step 2: adds density values ​​to a dynamic grid.

Step 3: Select the container and click the tab fluidShape in the Attribute Editor.

Step 4: set the Content method for speed at any setting other than Disabled. Do the following:

• Set it to Dynamic Grid to allow internal forces to affect the velocity at each time step.
• Set it to Gradient so that the values ​​of Speed remain constant at each time step and select which gradient of values ​​you want to use.
• Set it to Static Grid to define a specific velocity path that remains constant at each time step and then add the velocity values ​​to the grid.

Step 5: aAdd temperature and fuel values ​​to the container, if you are using them in the simulation. (Temperature and fuel can be used for explosion and combustion effects.)

Step 6: adds color to the fluid.

Step 7: Play the simulation using the playback controls at the bottom of the Maya window.

Step 8: If you are in wireframe mode, the fluid is displayed as particles by default. To see the simulation as it would be rendered, switch to shaded display mode and in the display area of ​​the fluidShape attribute editor, change Shaded display a As rendered.

Step 9: Modify the appearance and behavior of the fluid. You can make the fluid collide with and move geometry, affect soft bodies, and interact with particles. It is also possible to convert your fluid object into a polygonal mesh.

Creating non-dynamic fluid effects

In non-dynamic fluid effects, the fluid property values ​​are predefined within Maya and remain constant over time, meaning they do not need to be recalculated. You create the appearance of the fluid by texturing a special fluid shader that is built into the fluid.

This shader is built into the fluid for better performance. If you want the fluid effect to have movement, you can animate (keyframe) texture attributes. Because Maya does not solve fluid dynamics equations, rendering this type of fluid is much faster than rendering a dynamic fluid.

Clouds, fog, space and other more abstract effects are good candidates for non-dynamic effects. To create a non-dynamic fluid effect:

Step 1: creates a liquid container.

Step 2: adds density values ​​to the container that cannot be changed with There. Do one of the following:

• Add them as a predefined value gradient.
• Add them to a static grid.

Step 3: add color to the container using the built-in fluid shader.

Step 4: textures the fluid content using built-in fluid texturing capabilities.

Step 5: To create motion, keyframe the attribute Texture Time in the Textures section of the fluidShape attribute editor.

Take a look at: 6 Best Programs to Create Animations

Final thoughts

At first, a fluid simulation can be really confusing and we know it. But we hope that with the help of this tutorial you have learned how to make a fluid animation to simulate physical liquids and smoke. We hope that the material has been useful for the realization of your project. If so, let us see your opinions through the comments section. Don't forget that we will be waiting for you here with a lot of tutorials.