First: Sorry for the grammar. I’m not good in English, but I give my best. If you don’t understand something, look in the picture - Maybe then it’s clear.
In this Tutorial I will show you how you can make a Liquid Text in Realflow 3 and Lightwave 8. The tutorial also includes how you can import simulations from Realflow into Lightwave with the Nextlimit plugins. The Tutorial is for beginners.
- First create a new project in Realflow 3. I use in this example the name “text_tut” and save it in “C:\Realflow\”. Now all folders which are needed in this project are created in “C:\Realflow\text_tut” (pic1).
- Start Lightwave Modeler and create a text (shortcut “Shift+W”) in the viewport “Right” (pic2). To make the Text 3D use the “Extrude” tool (shortcut “Shift+e”) and extrude the text with left mouse button in the viewport “Top”, so it looks 3D like here (pic3). If you don't want to create the example objects you can download the objects here.
- Next triple the text (shortcut “Shift+t”) (pic4) and press “F2” to centre it.
- Save the object with the name “text” in the folder “C:\Realflow\text_tut\objects”.
- Then create a new object (shortcut “N”): use the “box” tool (shortcut “Shift-x”) to create the floor. The floor should look like (pic5).
- Triple the floor (shortcut “Shift+t”) and centre it (shortcut “F2”).
- Save it in “C:\Realflow\text_tut\objects” with the name “floor”.
- Swap to Realflow and open the objects: go into the objects Tab and use “import objects” (pic6).
- Then your project should look like (pic7).
- You can move the camera in the viewports in Realflow by holding “alt” + “left mouse button ” or “alt” + “right mouse button ” or “alt” + “middle Mouse button ” and moving the Mouse.
- Select the "text"-object and move it up (shortcut “w” and use the green arrow to move the object up and down).
- Go to the emitters tab and create a “Fill-Deform object” emitter.
- Change the following settings (red marked) (pic8).
- Go to the Daemons tab and add a "Gravity"-daemon. It should nowlook like (pic9).
- Open the “Scene Tree” and add the object “floor” to the emitter like (pic10) (select the “floor” on the right side and the “Fill-Deform” emitter on the left side and press “Add Selection”.
- Close the “Scene Tree” and then add a mesh: go to the mesh tab and press create Mesh (pic11).
- Change the following settings: (pic12) (pic13)
- Press “Built Mesh” to see what is like. It should look like (pic14). If it looks like (pic15) with these options, your object is too small. You can make it bigger with the Stretch Tool (shortcut “r”). Move over an arrow and press left mouse button to stretch the Axis. Don’t forget to stretch the floor. Floor and Text should always have the same relation. Then try again to build the Mesh like (pic14).
- Go to the “Export Central” and press “export all”. Then go to the Mesh Export and tick off the box “Mesh Sequence (.lwo)” (pic16).
- Then close the “Export Central” and save the project (shortcut “Ctrl+S”).
- Next press “Action” in Realflow (pic22). Now the program starts to render. You don’t have to render all 200 Frames. You can for example cancel the render process after the Frame 75 (like in this example). To stop the render process press “Action” again. I have stopped it after frame 75 (It took 14 min. and 38 sec. to render with a P4, 2.67 GHZ, 768MB Ram)
- Now for every frame is saved a mesh in the folder meshes.
- Go to Nextlimit Homepage (www.nextlimit.com) and download the Lightwave Plugins (Download | Plugins | Lightwave). Export the Files “nlflowtracer.p” and “NextLimit.p” in the plugin folder of Lightwave (normaly: C:\programs\LightWave [8]\Plugins).
- Open Lightwave Layout and go to “Layout | Plugins | Add Plugins” (pic19)
- Select the two plugins and add it. A message shows you that 22 plugins have been added.
- Then load the object C:\Realflow\text_tut\meshes\Mesh01001.lwo (only the first one).
- Go to the properties of the object and use “Deform | Add Displacement | NextLimit_Realflow_mesh” (pic17).
- Set the last Frame in Layout to 75 (pic17).
- Move camera and light(s) in right position.
- If you want to change the surface, you have to change always both in the surface Editor (pic18). Both surfaces must be exact the same, so it’s the best if you change one Surface, copy it (right Mouse Key on the Surface Name and “copy”) and paste on the other one (“paste”).
- Now go to the camera properties and set “Antialiasing” to “low” (pic20). Then go to “Rendering” | “Render options” and set „Ray Trace Shadows“ and „Ray Trace Reflection“ (pic21).
- Last you have to set up the “Output Files” and press “F10” to render the video.
A rendered movie with the settings of this tutorial looks like that: movie 1 (DivX Codec, 1.36 MB)
I know it doesn't look really nice, but thats only to show how you can do it. If you want a better result, try the settings i have used on movie 2.
Another movie is that here: movie 2 (DivX Codec, 1.20 MB)
In this example I have changed the mesh settings (look at Point 17): Polygon size: 0.00, Blend Factor: 95.0, Radius: 0.04. But it takes 1h 37min and 28sec to render in Realflow 3.
If you want the Scene of this Tutorial you can download it here.
After Download you have to open “text_tut.flw”with Reaflow and press “Action”. After frame 75 press “Action” again to stop. Now you can open “Lightwave1.lws” and Lightwave Layout load the scene. Now you only need to set up the surface and render the scene.
If you have any Questions or if you want send me a feedback, you can write an email to shark95_1@hotmail.com.
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