Fluid emission doesn't follow animated inflow object

Question

I am animating some text (converted to a mesh) shake around in front of the camera. After that, I want it to turn into a fluid and fall away. I tried going to the starting point of the mesh falling as a fluid (frame 86), and then made a giant, transparent cube for the domain and made the text mesh the inflow. When I baked the fluid, all that happened was that that fluid started falling out from the starting point of the text in frame 1.

P.S. I am rendering with Cycles.

P.P.S. I would like the fluid to fall until frame 250.

Answer 1

The text mesh should not be a fluid inflow, but a fluid fluid (just change type from inflow to fluid). An inflow will keep producing liquid throughout the animation.

Now, if you bake this, you will see fluid start falling at frame 1. In order to start the fluid simulation at frame 86, go to the domain settings and set Offset to -86. You don't have to rebake to see the results.

Then all you have to do is to keyframe the visibility of the fluid object (the text) so that it is visible at frame 85, but not at frame 86. Because at that point, the fluid simulation takes over, so to speak.

However, what you will probably discover is that there is an obvious change taking place when switching from the text mesh to the fluid. One way to get around this is to set the resolution of the domain to something very large (greater than 800 at least).

The easier solution is to replace the text mesh with a mesh of the fluid as it looks in the first frame of the fluid animation. Just go the first frame where the fluid appears, then duplicate the fluid domain but leave it in the same place. Under Modifiers you will find the fluid sim. Apply the modifier. This will create a mesh of the fluid as it appears in that frame. Replace the text mesh with this one.