LiquiGen Advanced Tutorial | Importing Objects, Exporting Mesh

Summary

Alec Miller demonstrates an advanced LiquiGen workflow using a hand-and-sword animation passing through a pool of water, inspired by Excalibur. The tutorial covers creating still water, importing animated colliders, exporting the resulting mesh, and bringing it into Cinema 4D and Blender.

Creating Smooth, Still Water

LiquiGen readily creates turbulent liquid, but a flat, calm surface can take more adjustment. The tutorial’s main recommendations are:

• Increase simulation detail by reducing voxel size, while raising voxel, particle, and triangle limits as needed to avoid resource-limit errors.
• Increase Projection Max Iterations and lower Projection Target Divergence to reduce surface noise.
• Adjust Enforce Particle Distance and Compensate Compression to reduce particles pushing against one another and the container.
• Turn off waves and white water, and adjust the emitter and simulation setup to keep the pool level.
• Tune these settings for each scene; the right values depend on the setup and available hardware.

Importing Animated Objects

The example hand and sword are exported from Cinema 4D as an FBX, with selection-only export and animation tracks enabled. Blender’s FBX export is similar; the tutorial notes that LiquiGen worked more reliably with FBX than Alembic in this workflow.

In LiquiGen, the object is brought in through an import node and used as a collider. Keeping the object’s scale and position consistent between the DCC application and LiquiGen makes alignment and later export easier. The instructor also adjusts the collider’s relative resolution for better collision detail and uses stickiness and velocity transfer to control how water clings to and moves with the sword. Stickiness can be animated so the liquid initially follows the sword, then releases and falls.

Exporting and Using the Mesh

The tutorial exports the liquid as an Alembic (.abc) mesh. Linking the imported model’s Transform Output to the export node helps preserve coordinate orientation and alignment. The export setup includes choosing the output path, frame range, and whether to export velocity.

Export velocity when motion blur will be added in the rendering application. LiquiGen writes velocity in X, Y, and Z vertex maps, which need to be assigned to the renderer’s motion-vector or vertex-speed inputs.

• Cinema 4D: Merge the Alembic file, retaining the matching scale and frame rate. The tutorial shows motion-blur setup for Redshift and Octane using the exported velocity maps.
• Blender: Import the Alembic with Always Cache enabled, then use Cycles motion blur and the imported velocity data. The instructor notes that they are not a Blender expert, but demonstrates the workflow working.

Tutorial Resources

The instructor says the project file and a screenshot of the final settings will be available through Gumroad.

Main speaker/source: Alec Miller, founder of Royals & Rogues.