Animating a Water Drop

This tutorial uses Bryce 5, to animate a drop of water coming out of a water tap.
To simulate the clinging effect water has, metaballs will be used. The metaballs will have a clear reflective water material applied to them. For a convincing animation the water will need to reflect the environment around it. One way to accomplish this ( without building a large scene ) is to create a reflective environment.

Building the Scene A reflective environment has been built, then a metaball is added ( named water 1 ) and flattened out on the Y axes. A reflective clear water material is applied to it.


Then the water 1 metaball is duplicated ( named water 2 ). It's scaled smaller and placed so the bottom is flush with the bottom of water 1 metaball. A third metaball is duplicated ( water 3 ) scaled smaller then water 2, and move so it's top is just touching water 1 and 2 bottom's. This is the base of the water where the drop will form.



For the drop a new metaball is created with the water material applied to it ( drop 1 ), and scaled so it's slightly oblate on the Y axes. Then placed so it's just emerging slightly from the water metaballs.



All the metaballs are selected and grouped ( water group ) so they can be easily manipulated at once. The a Water Tap object is added and the water group placed so it's just at the nozzle of the tap.




Creating the Animation

Before setting up the animation, the action needs to be thought out. Observing a real life situation will make this process easier. For this simulation the force of gravity will pull on the water, which will form a droplet. The droplet will break free, and quickly fall. So the majority of the shot will be the droplet forming, then a short shot of the droplet falling. Estimating the animation will be four seconds, three of which will be the droplet forming and one for it falling.

So a four second animation is set-up ( File/Animation Setup... ), for the sake of web display the frame rate will be twelve FPS ( frames per second ).


Then enable Auto Key and set ticker marks for every frame, then scale the time line to fit completely in the view.



With the time line marker set at 0.000 and all the metaballs selected ( not the metaball group ) a keyframe is add for them. The key icon lights up when a keyframe is added to the objects.


Then the marker is moved to the three second ticker, and another keyframe added. Then only the Drop metaball is selected and move down so it's still clinging to the water metaballs but at a point where it's ready to break free. Then the water 2 and 3 metaballs are selected, moved down and scaled smaller.


Then the Water 3 metaball is stretched on the Y axes so it's fairly round, then scaled and moved so it filling the gap between Water metaball 2 and drop metaball.


Move the time marker to the last frame and add a keyframe for all the metaballs. Then move the water drop so it falls completely out of the scene. How fast the drop falls will depend on how far down it is moved. Then place water metaballs 2 and 3 back to their original positions and sizes. Water metaball 3 will need to be flatten back out on the Y axes.


To create a little bounce as the water snaps back into place ( after the drop falls ), the time marker is placed at about 3.3 seconds. Then move and/or scale water metaball 2 and 3. Then move the time marker to 3.6 and move and/or scale water metaball 2 and 3, the opposite of what they were translated at time marker 3.3.



Play the animation ( wireframe mode ) and make or edit any keyframes which may be need adjusting.


Then go to Edit/Render Animation, to set-up a file name, file type, location to save it and render the animation.

This animation tutorial is written and provided by : Stephen Ray