...
It can be difficult to get a good mesh from just a few hundreds or thousands of particles. Those meshes often look blobby and muddy, not like water.:
Meshes with default settings created from simulations with 5000 and 92000 particles
Resolution, Radius, Smooth
...
So, the art is to find a balance between "Resolution" and "Radius". Since this balance is sometimes difficult to get achieve you should take a look at "Smooth":
- "Smooth" controls how strong the individual spheres will be blended together.
- A starting value around 3 4 or 4 5 is good. Higher values will remove more detail from the mesh.
The mesh from above with higher "Resolution" and smoothing.
Thinning, Relax
Another very common mistake is the extensive use of the "Thinning" and "Relax" filters:
- These parameters are applied to sharpen a mesh's border, but very high settings may create the look of liquid metal.
- Start with moderate "Relax" values, e.g. 0.1, and increase the number of "Relax Iterations" instead (e.g. 5) to get better control.
- "Thinning" will shrink the mesh and when the value is too high the mesh will not match the underlying particle cloud anymore.
The same mesh shows more details with "Thinning" and "Relax".
Building the Mesh
At the moment, particle simulation and meshing are connected: when the mesh sequence is being cached, the particle simulation will always be performed as well .(please note that it is currently not possible to create meshes from already cached simulations). Individual meshes for testing purposes can be created though:
- "Auto Build". When enabled the mesh will be created automatically when you change a parameter from the "Mesh" tab.
- "Build" Mesh". A click on this button triggers the mesh creation process.
...