Water VFX with Blender, RealFlow, and After Effects

I had an assignment to create a cool thing using RealFlow fluid sims. I chose the VFX route. Here's a quick look at some of the things I did to set up my scene and create some realistic looking water refraction, etc. This isn't a tutorial... more like a brief peek under the hood.
AdhesiveWombat's "Storm Crusher" Music Video:
• [VIDEO] AdhesiveWombat...
See my work at www.chrisreillyportfolio.com

[@ChrisRCGI]

Hi everyone! Enjoy this type of video?

[@juniorcuadros3997]

Please tutorial on this excellent video. Greetings from Argentina!

[@evilexe3160]

This is great

[@akunpremium7603]

Yeahhhh

[@eelam_hiphops]

make tutorials bro

[@shashwatmolina]

yes!

[@LaneCarter]

I like this style. Giving the main concepts and not going into too much detail.

[@douguk2]

Loved :) I'm a noob to blender, but I have a dream scene I'm planning on doing. It's bassicaly to animate an aligator getting out of water. Lots to do till I get there though. Thanks for sharing your work

[@jamesmccallum1248]

Twenty year vfx veteran here who gripes all the time about tutorials that waste your time.
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this video.

[@HalfWarrior]

Extremely cool and awesome work Chris!

[@BlenderFan]

Great job and thanks for showing your workflow.

[@avavfx91]

subscribed because of this video bro. keep on making this type of video because you are really good at explaining it straight to the point.

[@ubong120]

Same

[@cffilmmaker]

Thank friggin you. I've been looking for a video on this forever. Great job

[@MoviesRemastered]

This is awesome, dude! If find doing quicker videos like this draws people in but adding another breakdown video keeps everyone happy.
Best of luck with your channel. New sub!

[@CalebDigital]

Amazing work bro! They better give you an A+++ on this! U probably did better than anyone else in that class🤣🔥

[@scale8125]

Great video. Could also drag your feet while you walk to add a MASSIVE boost to realism. That much water is heavy, so you wouldn't be able to walk through it as effortlessly as air.

[@ubong120]

Lovely content I’m looking at blender differently now

[@Shaaan]

Suggestion : You could make two collision objects for each leg in the somewhat shape of an actual leg and individually keyframe them. but that'd have taken much longer anyway..

[@ChrisRCGI]

I agree. Two objects would have been better, and if I had even more time, I could have keyframed them to match my leg movement. I was exporting the collision objects as .FBX's and importing to RealFlow, and I was trying to keep the animation very simple due to some of the keyframe glitches that can happen when exporting, and then importing again.

[@DECODEDVFX]

Interesting workflow.

[@africanstarship8971]

I like this format because it is fluid ... pun intended !

[@oGrqpez]

that was... cool. I never saw anyone try something like this...

[@aashxq]

This is so cool ❤️‍🔥

[@manuelherrerahipnotista8586]

Great video man

[@ooshaakao2006]

Good luck bro we'll support you

[@BillZebubproductions]

This was great!

[@KemicalKiddMUSIC]

this is sick

[@venox314]

Damn looks sick!

[@AneeshArts]

It's Very Cool Man!!!!

[@AndreiChrisso]

Waw amazing :)

[@DocShriniwas]

Thanks

[@gymgofit]

Awesome

[@wattosoldier]

There is a way to make bubbles?? If you put it on there it could be more realistic.

[@HarisInspirasimu]

terimakasih tutorialnya, sangat menarik dan menambah ilmu buat saya yang lagi belajar 3d Blander, sukses selalu, salam kenal dari saya

[@NimoClancy]

Mate, You deserve way more subs. Honestly just take mine lol.
i cant wait to see more videos by you

[@BlackGeckoStudio]

Awesome!!! Can you tell, how exactly you imported foam particles from realflow to blender! I did some tests on importing particles into blender from realflow, but it overloaded my pc, and I did it with very weird way)). And maybe you can suggest some solutions. Thank you!

[@ChrisRCGI]

Hi! Yes I did figure out how to do this. It had to do with "instancing" a blender mesh to the points of the particles (which were imported as an alembic). So, I had a very small sphere instanced to the points of the alembic object. For the crashing problem, that just sounds like there were probably way too many particles coming in from RealFlow, so I'd fix that at the simulation phase.

[@BlackGeckoStudio]

@@ChrisRCGI yeyyyyy, thanks a lot!) actually, I was using the same method, maybe it’s just for blender it’s hard to handle big simulations with foam. Thanks a lot man!!!!

[@VFX_BUDDY]

what's your pc specs??

[@hersh_yt]

how did you got the shadow exactly ? shadow of any video or image ?

[@ChrisRCGI]

The alpha of the plane that I am projected on is basically a silhouette. Think of it as a human sized cardboard cutout. The plane then naturally casts a shadow onto the environment using the lighting in the scene, so it's all "automatic". Just make sure you set the shadow blend mode of that plane to "alpha hashed".

[@bikash3003]

interested to vfx wolrd but dont know where to start

[@FunnyAmped]

Donut. Lol, But it really works. All you have to learn is a 3d software (for vfx) and a compositor for those extra stuff.

[@nhattoantran6903]

Hay

[@lzmihich]

It is Great, a more traditional depicted tutorial would ve even Greater!

[@terminatorpg1067]

Very nice! What you could have done is to wet your pants when shooting the footage so it seems that the water affects you.

[@No_Plastic]

What is this?

[@ZangdaroMonkey]

Can you contrôle water ?

[@oreynani3778]

No, Its a simulation

[@VIDMOO]

I have been using Real Flow for 15 years, you can pretty much control everything.

[@riccardofissore7996]

Nice stuff, but as a subscriber I would expect/want a more tutorialish (longer) video

[@peaolo]

Wouldn't be easier priorly taking a photo of the entire backyard from a higher position in the sky and reproject that photo on a virtual ground with the pool walls in order to let you shoot the main footage with some better markers on the grass for the tracking part?

[@unicornhuntercg]

I think you could've gotten away with dynamic paint

[@ChrisRCGI]

Love dynamic paint! Especially for water. Used it in my thesis. Also in my Alternate Realities entry (another vid on the channel). For this project though, we were required to use RealFlow, since it was a fluid sim class.

[@FatLingon]

Really good, but I'd go with the limitations of the fluid physics and the fact that your pants do not get wet, and make the collision object bigger, so that it looks like you have some magic pants that displaces water with room to spare.

[@Fleischkopf]

there's content aware fill in ae? dafuq 😱

[@unclemonty9506]

kinda cool but the amount of movement in the water makes it look totally fake - you've put an ocean into a small pool

[@memewgaming2198]

your pants don't get wet even when exposed to water lol

[@ChrisRCGI]

Yes! You're right. If I had more time I could have used a black solid in AE with an animated mask, and then tracked it to my pants, and have it expand as I walked to look like the pants getting soaked. Or... could have done a full wet pants cloth sim.

[@transinhnhat1838]

Hay

[@trannhat6743]

Hay