2 Methods for Rigging Liquids in Containers

Alex Mann Shows Some Ways for Rigging Liquids in Containers With Maya That Doesn’t Require Dynamics.

Ever wanted to animate something sloshing around in a glass without using a simulation or dynamics system? Seems simple enough, but it’s actually a little more complicated than you might anticipate. 3D Rigging and Character TD Alex Mann shares two really ingenious methods for rigging liquids in any container. One way uses the modeling MultiCut tool as a dynamically updating slice.

You may recall that Maya’s older (and deprecated) Cut Tool could cut with a plane that was a widget in the scene. This technique is not too far off from that concept. One of the potential drawbacks to this method is that you won’t be able to add any deformers after the cut.

The second technique is a more elaborate one that involves using the shear attribute for the object’s transform node and deformers. One slight drawback to this method for rigging liquids is that some export routines will not recognize the Shear attributes, such as FBX. Either technique shows ingenuity, and both are reasonably easy to set up.