Lava Surface question

[catchyid]

Hi,

I've used the Viscosity Fluids tool shelf to create Lava, still experimenting with it... The only thing that I still have no clue about is how to add details to lava surface? So far, Lava surface looks so smooth (like water)!! My question: Is it something in the simulation I need to improve to create rough surface (maybe increase viscosity, decrease particle separation, ...) , or is it something in the surface meshing parameters, or maybe it is a displacement shader in rendering? If someone has any pointer on this topic, please let me know

Thanks

[lavitz01]

you do not need to use displacement. it can be done using it but not needed for most simulations. It all depends on how you have your simulation set up. for the lava sim have you tried to decrease particle separation so they are closer together to make it less liquid like water as you were stating? you can also achieve this through voxel density. if you tell us which nodes you are using or take a screen shot it will help for advising. 

as for shading if it is a look issue it can be fixed by lighting and texturing correctly. for my lava i used a geo light at an intensity of .5 and emitting a yellow orange color to give the lava look.

[derjcmp]

As Chase said, decreasing particle separation will give you a much sharper result. You can enable Rest and Dual Rest attributes on the FlipSolver so you can add displacement later on on render time. For shading lava I usually go and create a pointVOP and map the temperature from a PyroVOP, the result is much better from the standard lava shader. 

[catchyid]

Thanks guys, decreasing particle separation did actually introduce the details I was looking for

Now, I have another problem (plz, see attached files):

I have a stream of lava falling vertically on a ground, my goal is to use viscosity + temperature cooling + temperature to viscosity mapping such that lava accumulates on itself when touches the ground forming a thick base, then it should spread horizontally ( imagine pouring thick honey/tooth-paste on a plate). The problem I am having is that when lava touches the ground, it gets compressed, i.e. it does not form any volume as the particles get destroyed, instead of accumulating and then spreading vertically ??? 

 

 

lava_v2.hip

[lavitz01]

If I recall correctly, you will need to change the values in your particle fluid surface node. I believe the values you need to tweak are voxel scale and influence scale. I increased all of your vales by a factor of (10,5,2.5) and your lava, it needs more tweaking to make it look realistic.

particle separation 0.045

voxel scale 0.5

influence scale 7.5

Droplet scale 0.025

PS: you might need to re-cache your surface cache since it overrides all the nodes before it.

check out this tutorial. it helped me when I was learning lava. not sure if it was part 1 or part 2 that talked about lava thickness.

 

good luck and id love to see your final product.

[catchyid]

Thanks... I've watched these videos before and I was able to get good result already  I've also watched the video below which has a better way of creating bubbles/tendrils  :