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I've only been using Blender for a few months, and the fluid simulation for only a few days.

I've made a bit of progress in creating a video of a swimming pool with a pipe supplying water. This is the insirpation:

Therme Vals in Switzerland

I've struggled with tutorials as they are usually showing a faucet or tap filling an empty bowl. To get around this, I've created a very shallow block only a few inches deep and set it up as a fluid and inflow, fitting within the domain. I created a bent pipe, and inside inserted a small cube that supplies the water and also set it up as a fluid, and inflow.

Overall the performance is more or less what I'm looking for, but I can't get the flow to be refined enough. No matter the size of the little cube inside the pipe, the water flowing out is just too large of a volume, and thus I have to create a gigantic, and less elegant looking pipe. Note the image attached was when I set up the pool to fill all the way up from the bottom and it created weird dark splotches on a diagonal axis from the pipe to the lower right. I ran that simulation at a resolution of 128.

enter image description here

Assuming that I needed to I needed more detail I pumped things up to 256. It was a tiny bit better, but still not what I was looking for. I added bubbles etc... and some fog to make it feel like a mineral pool on a cold day.

enter image description here

At 256 I notice the flow isn't as smooth. It's a bit delayed coming out of the pipe (takes about 50 frames to come out) and at 512 it randomly spits out water and spray over a 250 frame range. Its like a pipe that's actually got some serious plumbing issues and doesn't flow consistently. I also find that running the resolution at 512 creates more of an orange peel like effect on the water. Note in the picture immediately after, it's a few frames after and only comes out as a spray.

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Long story short, I can't refine the flow to the dimension I'd like, and adding more detail seems to make the flow a bit more erratic. I find 256 seems to be the sweet spot, I'd like to create something where the water flows out of a 2" pipe and not 8".

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  • $\begingroup$ Welcome. Please use a title that matches the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue in such way that anyone searching for a similar problem may easily find it. Use the edit link above, remove anything superfluous, avoid words like "this","issue with" or "question about". Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors will see, answers you get depend heavily on how inviting it is. See "What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"" $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos ♦
    Commented Aug 1, 2023 at 9:01

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Ok, I made some progress and I think I figured out a few things:

  1. I used a cube ( as I saw in an example) and not a sphere for the inflow object. Replacing it with a sphere made a huge difference.

  2. The surface emission needs to be turned on. I find a setting of 0.6 works, but I've gotten it down to 0.4 (although looks a bit too thin for me).

  3. Is planar needs to be turned off.

  4. Free-ing the bake might not be enough. I've gone in and deleted the old cache folder each time I've restarted a bake. It seems to create a more stable simulation without the random starting and stopping of flow.

A lot of instructional videos don't seem to cover points 2 and 3. In fact I think they might be new settings as I don't even see them shown in videos.

I think I've got the flow I'm more or less looking for. I'd like a bit more velocity out of the pipe, which I can tweak.

If anyone has suggestions to improve, I'd love to hear them!

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Instead of a volume you can emit from a plane - enable ‘planar’ and specify the initial velocity to point the water out of the pipe. This might give morn consistent results. I haven’t played around with fluid sims on the later versions of Blender but I know this used to help back in “the old days” (a few years back). Hope this helps. I really like the look you’re going for - fluid sims can be a bit of a pain to get right. Make sure to “apply scale” to domain and objects and higher resolution is usually better. Good luck!! $\endgroup$
    – Rich Sedman
    Commented Aug 2, 2023 at 7:03
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks Rich! I never actually thought of doing it from a plane. I'll give that a try tomorrow. It's been a few days of playing with the simulation and I need to do something else for a bit, haha. $\endgroup$
    – AviRenders
    Commented Aug 2, 2023 at 8:39

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