Static (fluid) Clouds

[duckspeaker]

This is probably a real lame question...but I'm not figuring it out.

I've created nice full looking cumulus clouds by emitting fluids from an object in a 3D fluid container.
They are really looking pretty good now.

I will play the simulation forward until I find a good "initial state".

Because I don't need them to animate/simulate---I break the link to "time" in the hypershade.

My question/problem:

After I save and re-open the file, the work I did to create the "initial state" and de-linking "time" have been lost.

I've even tried creating a (single file) cache to no avail.

Any suggestions?
Thanks!

[duckspeaker]

Absolutely a cache problem.

I took some advice from a previous post about using Single Frame cache, and it's working now.

(I suspect my problem was elsewhere--I bet a Single File cache should work)

(I suspect my problem may lay in my casual (and dismissive) use of Project Settings)

[bandu]

I would let the time link on and after symulating and seting initial state, just turn content method in fluid attribute to zero for velocity aso...
and if this doen't work, set the dynamic simulation/simulation rate scale to 0 instead...

havent try this yet......
because I paint my fluid as I want

Bandu

[duncanbrinsmead]

When you get the state you like, simply set initial state on the fluid then turn off the velocity grid and make the density grid static. The fluid will then not solve when you playback but simply keep the initial state... no need to cache.

Duncan

[dougj99]

Is there a way to do the opposite of this?

I have a fluid cloud that was created from a non-dynamic preset. Can I make it dynamic by changing the density to dynamic grid and turning on the velocity, or is there more to it than that?

Thanks

Doug

[duncanbrinsmead]

If the fluid preset relies on texture for the density then simply making the velocity and density dynamic will not allow it to animate. Additionally you need to make the coordinateMethod = dynamicGrid and coordinateSpeed = 1.0. This will push around the texture coordinates causing the texture to flow, although it gets pretty streaky fast.

You could instead turn off the texturing and paint densities, however the required resolution for detailed clouds is very high. Depending on your fluid you may run out of memory or get into very long solve times.

You might check out the bakeFluidShading command. This lets you convert a fluid into a second one, baking textures and shading to a simple density+color grids. Thus if you didn't want to paint a density grid you could derive one from a textured fluid using this command.

Duncan