2 Dynamic Elements Interacting, One Partially Animated

[trassalg]

What is the best way to tackle the following problem with Maya and RealFlow:

I have a dog and an ocean. The dog jumps into the ocean and the water needs to push the dog around, but also the dog needs to splash up water. Do I animate the dog's actions and movement and then place this in a RealFlow water element or is there a way to animate the dog's body movements, but not X/Y axis movements in the body of water, and have the water element force him back and forth?

Thanks for any tips you can give.

[joojaa]

depends on how much computation time you have to do / set up the simulation. And how you want to control things.

Ingeneral its a tradeoff if you want perfect simulation you cant really get any animation done right. So i think its WAY easier for animators to get a convincing look if they animate the buoyancy themselves.

[trassalg]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 12/31/08, 08:50 AM) [snapback]297918[/snapback]
depends on how much computation time you have to do / set up the simulation. And how you want to control things.

Ingeneral its a tradeoff if you want perfect simulation you cant really get any animation done right. So i think its WAY easier for animators to get a convincing look if they animate the buoyancy themselves.

What sort of workflow would you use? Use a dummy object to generate the water surface then animate the character and his buoyancy? Or do his animation first and have the water react as such?

[joojaa]

Animation first, after all your not after what is right but what looks best. If not then im afraid yu would need to simulate the dog too, because a swimming dog works on the feedback form water.