Create a Realistic Water Simulation

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Whether you like it shaken or stirred, Cycles and the Fluid Simulator tastes delicious.

Length:
37 minutes
Software:
Blender Cycles Build r41599
Difficulty:
Advanced
Rate:
VN:F [1.9.17_1161]
Rating: 4.8/5 (290 votes cast)

In this tutorial you will discover:

  • Realistic fluid settings
  • Water and glass materials for Cycles
  • How to model ice cubes and puddles

Up until now blender’s fluid simulator has kind of been a waste of time. Sure the fluid looked okay in the viewport, but when it came to rendering the internal renderer did a horrible job. The complex properties of water meant that it simply couldn’t create realistic results. However, thanks to the new physically accurate rending engine Cycles, we can have fluid that actually looks half decent.

Enter into a new era of realistic water and glass.

Finished Result

Realistic Water Simulation in Blender

Pour yourself a glass of Cycles

The image is based off this concept from iStockPhoto.

At a Glance

Screenshots from the video:

Further Inspiration

Not sure where to take this tutorial? Check out the links below for more fluid inspiration:

Create something cool with this tutorial? Post it below! I’m keen to see your results :)

Create a Realistic Water Simulation, 4.8 out of 5 based on 290 ratings

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)
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  • Suyog Pore

    The tutorial is very nice with very good results………I have a question though…..the floor on which the container is kept in the tutorial has a frosted look and hence the grainy texture but if I do not want the grain ?

    I have tried different shaders and materials and for some reason it seems to retain the grains, only when I have made it glossy/ totally reflective am I able to loose them.

    Is their a way to make it work without the grains ?

    • Matt

      I think the grains are partially caused by the rendering. Under the render tab, there will be an option for sampling. Set render samples much higher (I did 200. It took forever but looks awesome. 100 seems to be good too)

  • Samm Hi

    Thanks for the tutorial! This is the first thing I’ve made on Blender. I was going to start off with those tutorials where they tell you what everything does, but I thought I’d try this and I learned ALOT from it :D I think this is a better way to learn.

    So here’s my result :) It has a bit noise cos I did it with just 70 samples because I’m impatient and to not heat up my cpu too much

  • Samm Hi

    Thanks for the tutorial! This is the first thing I’ve made on Blender. I was going to start off with those tutorials where they tell you what everything does, but I thought I’d try this and I learned ALOT from it :D I think this is a better way to learn

    So here’s my result :) There’s a little bit noise cos I did it with just 70 samples cos Im impatient and to not heat up my cpu too much.. but it’s good enough

  • Daniel

    In 5:05, you select edges all around the glass by just one click. How? When I click like you, with same settings, it just selects one vertex instead of whole circle.. Is it something in user preferences, or what?

    • Samm Hi

      I got confused by this at first.. Use alt and click :)

  • Alyn

    ‘many’ not ‘mane’ just sorry about that….

    • Eka

      read his autobiography first, it’s on the right-bottom

  • Alyn

    Where you could learn so mane things about Blender?
    Respond please…

  • gman

    Tried this tut but wont bake more than a frame, the render time-line does complete.??

  • Jakub Jančička

    Thank for the tutorial. This is my result (slightly improved):

    http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/523037_519091071454065_374533732_n.jpg

  • Guest

    Thank for the tutorial. This is my result (slightly improved)

  • The.Jack

    to render press F12 and to save press F3

  • The.Jack

    Great Tutorial, Have my own glass now

    • The.Jack

      Ask For You Share It

  • The.Jack

    after rendering press F3 and save it where you want

  • Robbie

    Where do you download the image for the backround plane

    • Samm Hi

      I don’t know where to download his, but here’s mine if anyone wants it :) (I know it’s not perfect)

      • Jessica

        thanks

      • Ricardo

        thanks :)

      • Brian T

        Thanks, Very helpful :)

  • Kalle

    Great turotial! But, i cant get i to work properly. I’m trying to fill a mesh with fluid, but the fluid won’t stay inside te mesh. Well, it will, but, it seems to stop just outside the box, not in it. Any idea why?

  • Wingnut217

    How do I render the image and save it?

    • fergus

      On the properties panel, on the default setting, scroll down to output, and by default, it should be set to PNG. select whatever type of image you want, and then click the file output thing. Decide where on your computer you want the file, and then go onto the timeline on the bottom of the screen. On the timeline, you should have default settings set to start:1 and end:250. set end to 1, and click render, and then you will get it on whichever part on your computer you chose. Hope that helps!

    • Samm Hi

      That will only work though if you use “render animation”. The easiest way is just to use “render image” (or F12) and then image>save (or F3) and save it where you want :)

  • steelroo

    What happen to the comments?

  • Elame Koorts

    Thanks for this tutorial been searching for one like this forever, but I do have a slight problem and if you could help we with it I’d be forever grateful. I set everything up exactly as explain in the tutorial, but when it bakes my fluid object just hovers in the air like a ball of suspended water. I thought this was a gravity problem but my scene gravity is set to z: -10 so it’s not that.

    Please help if you can.

  • Elamé Koorts

    Thanks for the tutorial I’ve been looking for one like this. You said if I add no fluid velocity to the fluid object the simulation should be that of a tap where the liquid is just pulled by gravity, when I do this that is not the result the fluid just remains in mid-air as if there is no gravity. Why is this? And if you can please help.

  • Dany

    I have also made a .png from this video tutorial.

    The background emitter is from google so the quality is kinda low, that’s why the background is pixelated.

    http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7674/bluewater.png

  • Jordan

    Where the fuck is the background?

    • John

      Maybe you should actually watch the video before posting things like this

  • YetoKnight

    Ok, I know – however sample (a lot of samples).

    @blonder
    tuck: “Render” => “Integrator”
    Samples – you must give a lot of samples (I give 400 and is better)

  • blonder

    i have the same problem too with the noise.

    someone can help me?

  • YetoKnight

    I have problem: too many noise.

    http://oi47.tinypic.com/2akcxkz.jpg

    I gave more sample – no changes.
    My version: 2.63

    Anyone have an idea what to do?

  • Jordan

    Where is the download for the gradient in the background?

  • Oscar Castro

    Thanks for this tutorial!!!!, excellent explanation. From Caracas, Venezuela

  • Jono

    Very nice tutorial helped me quite a bit

  • George

    Hi, I read through everyone else’s comments but could not fix the baking problem… it just doesn’t want to bake all the fluid obj are inside the domain and i tried with really low resolution too just in case but doesn’t even start…
    PS: when i select domain for the box fluid obj, the dropdown says domain and gives me the bake button but the other dropdown menus say e.g. fluid world and not domain world as in you tutorial… can someone help pls.
    Thnx

  • Zaraleth

    Hi Andrew,

    Excellent tutorial. You’re a really great teacher. :)

    I have a question that I hope you or someone else can answer.
    Once I’ve finished baking the fluid sim, when i apply it at a specific frame. I can no longer see the progress of the fluid flow, in the other frames.

    Can you only sculpt a single frame, or am I missing something?

    Thanks

    p.s. You rock

  • lisabiziou

    This has probally been asked and answered. But when i do my water animation the most of the water just falls to the ground, ive tried fiddling with the velocitys, wat else could i be doing wrong?

  • http://3yard.net Ela

    Hi,
    Firstly, thanks for tutorial.;) It’s really wonderful there are people who want to share their knowledge.

    And secondly, I have a small problem. Could you tell me how to grab the inside of the glass with a loop (that ctlr r thing)? I’ve tried multiple ways and it grabs only from the outside. :(

  • Juan David

    Hey could you please upload the background you use for the plane !!! I got stucked in that part!!! thanks and sorry for my bad english!!!

  • Daniel Lapada

    http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/waterglass0002.png/

    Thanks for your tutorial, but why is the glass so grainy? But it’s pretty good. Thanks Again.

    • OGR

      I have same problem

    • Hunter Stevens

      I’s grainy because you didn’t change the sampling. Change the render to approximately 250, and then put the preview to about the same thing. to get rid of the small random white dots everywhere, make the seed about 100. Setting the menu’s to higher numbers, say 1000, will produce a higher image quality, but therefore take a lot longer to produce the image. hope this helped!!

  • MR.C

    Not enough memory! my computer went reallly slow after I set the fluid resolution to 180 and baked it. I had to abandon this tutorial :(

  • Mike K

    I have problem with water, when its in air its normal but when it falls to glass the water is black (not transparent) what did I do wrong? (sry for my english) please help.

  • Anilsa

    I have mine to the part where you make the material glass but it doesn’t look even similar in comparison! Can someone help figure this out?

    • Gary C.

      can you post a link to your render?

  • owa99

    I ended up getting the water to pour inside the glass and deleted the stream. I wonder what made it stop…

  • http://www.blenderguru.com Tim C.

    I followed your tutorial Andrew Price, but i could not figure out how to make that back ground in gimp or Photoshop so i downloaded the same looking back ground from blend swap thanks to irokrhus for sharing. hope you like it! =)

    http://s1154.photobucket.com/albums/p536/TGamer1447/?action=view&current=WaterPicture.png

  • Gary C.

    Here is a link to my attempt at the tutorial: http://home.comcast.net/~gchappel/pwpimages/waterglass3.4.png

    Not much change from Andrew’s, but I had to change the glass so folks would not think I just ripped his.

    Here is a link to the un-textured version: http://home.comcast.net/~gchappel/pwpimages/waterglass3.6.png

    Rendered with 1000 passes.

  • owa99

    Because of the large bake memory usage, I assume, the ball would not emit water past the second frame. If anyone had a fix for this, please state it, or I’ll just start over. :)

  • owa99

    UPDATE:

    I have tried putting the inflow mesh actually inside the cup, and that almost doubled the memory usage, even when I shrunk the box. Right now I’m awaiting results.

  • owa99

    Great Job with the tutorial, I have learned a lot about blender from watching it. There is just one problem that I cannot seem to overcome; In the water simulation, the water stops at the top of the glass as if it had a lid on top of it. I have tried lowering the waters velocity, changing the Volume Initialization to volume, and basically trying for it to use no memory. I have also checked the cup in edit mode, and there does not seem to be any mesh blocking it from pouring in. If there is a fix for this, please let me know, because I’d hate to come this far with no actual water in the picture.
    Thanks.

  • preecher

    your awesome Andrew and your tuts are amazing…and congrats on getting 3d world mag to publish you…i’d say that’s quite an accomplishment…

    i’m gonna work on this tut today…i actually was using blender on linux and did your fire/water tut and i started messing with the water mesh in blender so i’ve played with cycles a bit…of course it can not handle smoke…correct???…anyway i’m gonna try and get thru this today on wintel…my linux machine is a server and it makes it hot in here and it’s scorching outside…and as always thank you for your wonderful tuts…i’ve learned so much from you…and your accent is nice to listen to and your funny…have a great day/nite…
    ***chills and thrills***

  • http://www.blenderguru.com Tim C.

    I followed you tutorial after i finally found that type of background that i got from blend Swap. i tried to change the color of the picture in Gimp 2.6 to purple, green, orange and many other colors, but i could not save the changes i made on the picture. so how would i save the changes that i made in Gimp 2.6?

    • lood339

      Hi Tim C.
      Can you tel me where you get the background from the blendSwap? I tried find it in the “texture” category, but didn’t find them.

  • john bass (Tristan) im refered to

    Hello i really liked the it but i need the orb or what ever and i im like you i dont get gimp as much and i not sure if i can get photoshop for free so can you send me the imeges of smoe of the orbs you made for the background photo please
    send them to johnbass00@gmail.com

  • Gary C.

    Thanks for another great tutorial. A couple of comments while going through the tutorial. At one point you noted that the ice bubbles seemed to resize on you and you thought you had done something inadvertent. This same thing happened to me when I dup’d the cubes then rendered and saw large bubbles in the dup’d cubes but not in the original. Anyway, I think it is a bug. Resizing in one (used same numbers that were already there fixed the problem). Something still bothered me about my final render and I realized after watching real water that bubbles form at the top of the water when poured. I imagine this can be done with a particle system. In oem fluid sim progs they use “foam”. How would you approach simulating foam for this in Blender. As I already said great tutorial.

  • matt

    Hello!
    When I’ve put all the loop cuts in, I can only select one point at a time – how do you select a whole loop cut before scaling out to create the ridges in the glass? (05:18)

    • Gary C.

      Not sure if anyone answered this for you yet. But you alt-R Click on the ring you want to adjust. Holding Shift alt-R Click for multiple rings. I apologize, but this is for Wintel only. I don’t know what the key sequences are for Mac or Linux.

      • Didier

        It at least works for mac and PC.

    • krishna

      use ALT+Lclick to select loop vertices

  • Lourens.V

    When ever I try to select those ‘rings’ for the bumps in the glass I always end up having to hold ‘Shift’ in and select all the vertices. What am I doing wrong?

    • Brian Kaufman

      If you hold down the LMB (left mouse button) when you create the ring, you are then able to drag it into place and it will be in position when you release the LMB.

    • anonymous

      Alt-right click to select the edgeloop

  • Blanco111

    As a beginner, I didn’t think I could get through your tutorial. But I loved your final image so much. While trying to follow your tutorial, I was cursing you from afar for going so fast. Of course, now that I completed the tutorial, I think you’re amazing! You do this like it’s finger painting…Here’s my results: http://fav.me/d530556 I plan to put the headphones on and go through your tutorial again. Hopefully it’ll be easier to follow this time. Thanks for making this tutorial available.

    • whjms

      Looks amazing! Maybe one day, Blender will take over Max/Maya…

  • Atul

    Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders
    http://tinypic.com/r/25qstoi/6

    youtube link pls

    • whjms

      You shouldn’t watch this stuff at work/school.

    • Didier

      You can use a proxy (if acces isn’t denied like on work or school) like rastahighway, just google for ‘fast proxy rastahighway’ or ‘dark proxy rastahighway’, you can also download TOR on torproject.org but it doesn’t support flash (by default) so I don’t think TOR is going to help by default. You can also use other proxies as long as your IP-adress doesn’t look like you’re coming from a country were this site is blocked. If youtube isn’t blocked, Andrew has a channel, I believe it was AndrewPrice or something like that, just google the title of this vid in youtube and you will find it somewhere if he has uploaded it on youtube as well as on his site.

  • Brian T.

    good tutorial. one problem, though- every time i hit ‘Bake’ it wont bake. is there something i may have done wrong? i have no clue why its doing this.

    • landon

      you have to be in object mode

    • Subverso

      Also happened with me. Take a look at your inflow sphere (the “water emitter”) if it’s inside de cube domain. When I’ve looked from top I realized mine was not. Once I’ve placed inside the domain cube it started to show the sim.

      • BawsAnimations

        SAME THING HAPPENED HERE!
        Please tell me why it won’t bake when i press bake!

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