Making Liquid
 

Alright, my friend and I have spent hours trying to figure out how to make a realistic looking liquid (preferably water, to start with) with Lightwave, but we can't seem to find the trick.
We have been trying to fill up a cup with particles from a particle emitter. We were then planning on making the particles look like water with Hypervoxels.
We created a particle emitter over the cup. Then we altered the emitter options so that the particles fell because of gravity. We set a collision effect on the cup so that the particles stayed there.
Our main problem was that the particles didn't stack up and fill the cup. We toyed around with the particle size and stuff, but nothing really seemed to produce the results we wanted. We actually did get the particles to stack up, but when we tried to render a frame, the particles moved and seemed to have gone through the cup.
If anyone knows how to make realistic liquid using Lightwave, PLEASE inform me:headbang:

Thanks
Dylan

Someone pleeease give me some help; I'm still going at it with no results...

Can anyone help me??? I know this kind of thing is possible; I've seen it done. I just don't know how to do it myself. Please give any advice!

I don't think you're going to have much luck by using particles alone to be honest. Not if you're wanting it to look realistic and are doing a close-up shot.

At the extreme end (ie: hyper-real) you're going to need to look at a proper fluid simulator like Real-Flow (not cheap).

At the other end of the scale, I seem to recall a recent copy of 3D world magazine had an article on making a reasonably decent fountain with geometry and animated textures - this route may be slightly better for you - simulate the main pouring fluid with geometry and particles. With some clever morphing and surfacing you could then model the liquid forming into the glass over time...

Thanks for the advice Mark,

I really would like to have Realflow, but it's Realexpensive too. The main problem with my particles is that they won't stack up. There is an example of the stacking being achieved on this site: http://www.ksdd.com/articles/?p=14

it's about half way down the page, and you can view the video file. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. My particles just won't fill the cup.

Thanks

Sorry, a little late for the party, just got back from vacation.

You are expecting imaginary water drops to fill up a cup. you could use collision effects so the water will lay on top of each other but I think for more realistic action, You really need to fake it, that is what it's all about.
You can create a volume and can raise it up as your particles go into the cup, try parenting your volume to a null and raise it over time, you can use another emitter to produce some bubbling turbulence for effect

Hope that helps if you haven't already taken care of it ;)