how to create a lava-lamp ?

[stunndman]

hey lowkey

i'm a total newbie myself - so can't help you much with the particle approach - but i just thought the wax could be modeled as a solid which is deforming slowly - you could make it a softbody and apply forces to it so it deforms to your liking - the surface shader would be something like a wax shader with translucency or something

or a solid body with the noisedeformer script from highend3d

the breaking up though could be tricky

[lowkey]

well, i already thought about that slow deformation thing yesterday, but i'm not quite sure about how to do it ... :thumbsdow

a few days ago i made a jellyfish-tutorial, in which such a deformation took place ... gonna take a deep look into the manuals, i guess ... :hmm:

how about the glass of the lamp, will i have to make it rigid or just passive for the wax to collide ?

1000 questions, hehhe ... anyway it's real fun though !

definitely the main problem will be randomly breaking up that fluid, as you said !

as material i picked an erythrocyte shader from highend3d and detached it's fractal noise node, so the surface becomes smoother and shinier. looks pretty nice, heheh ...

ok, man ... thx a lot for your attention :thumbsup:

[stunndman]

just another idea - metaballs - they are solids that merge just like blobbies if they come within a threshold - there is a plugin at highend for metaballs for maya - you could apply a noiseDeformer to the shape of each metaball (to give it the wobbling feature)

keyframe or apply dynamics to each ball representing a certain amount of wax (make like 5 balls) - so you don't even have to take care about the split up anymore

when any two balls approach close enough they will merge and if they get too far separated they'll split

the glass will most probably be a passive rigid body

[lowkey]

hmmmm ... unfortunately those metaball-plugs don't work at all !
although GUI-elements have been added "create metaball system" doesn't create anything ... :hmm:

damn ... :thumbsdow

[stunndman]

i am quite confused because i downloaded the 0.9b version from highend and it didn't work either

but i have this other version - not sure where i got it from - but found it here again http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~p.allen/Extra_PLUG_INS/Am_metaball/

hope that helps

[lowkey]

hello again,

this didn't help either -->

"am_metaball_nt" was compiled against too old a version of the
Maya API and is thus incompatible with the current Maya version.
Obtain a newer version of this plug-in !

that version won't even load into maya (v4.) !:wip:

anyway ... thanks a lot for your help, dude ... you rule !

:buttrock:

[stunndman]

ok, you didn't leave me a choice :) - i can't remember where i got it from - but this version is working on maya 3 and 4 - i put it up for you just in case - http://godonacid.com/shared/am_metaballs.zip

[lowkey]

nope ... simply doesn't work, though no warning message occurs on loading ! :thumbsdow

my last attempt of solving this was -->

glassCylinder --> passive/rigid
blobNURBs (manually created NURBs Shape) --> active/soft
turbulenceField on blobNURBs

with these settings, the blob gets deformed ( not very convincingly ! ) but leaves the glassCylinder when extended too much ... any ideas on creating that collision/deformation ?!

man, i owe you one ... great help !

maybe i'm just too newbieish to solve that now ... :hmm:
didn't think of it to be that complicated !

[Stever]

hmmm, thought I seen a tut on that somewhere.....

[stunndman]

Originally posted by lowkey
nope ... simply doesn't work, though no warning message occurs on loading ! :thumbsdow

my last attempt of solving this was -->

glassCylinder --> passive/rigid
blobNURBs (manually created NURBs Shape) --> active/soft
turbulenceField on blobNURBs

with these settings, the blob gets deformed ( not very convincingly ! ) but leaves the glassCylinder when extended too much ... any ideas on creating that collision/deformation ?!

man, i owe you one ... great help !

maybe i'm just too newbieish to solve that now ... :hmm:
didn't think of it to be that complicated !

this version of metballs "has" to work - remove the other one (the 0.9b version) and set up the new one

have you made your particles (of the softbody) collide with your rigid body ? if not use the dynamic relationship editor to setup collissions between your rigid body and your softbody

anyway - i setup a little scene that has just some of the basic attributes of your lamp - it's just a 10 minute thing - but it might help - be sure to check out the dynamic relationship editor settings

it's using the metaballs version from my post above

http://godonacid.com/shared/laval_lamp_test.mb

[lowkey]

have you made your particles (of the softbody) collide with your rigid body ?

ehhh, nope ... i thought this to be an embedded characteristic of softs and rigids ! :wip:

i'll check it out later ... thx for that scene file, gonna study it now !

c ya

:bounce:

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