Melting Ice
 

I am attempting to have an ice cube melt into a puddle. I am wondering if anyone has done this before or can suggest a good method of completing this. I have made some blend shapes, and done an animation, but the client doesnt think it looks like it is melting.

Any suggestions is appreciated in advance!

Melting Cube

Perhaps you could have the ice shatter instead. I'm still looking into the melting thing though. I'll tell you if I come across a solution :) That is, if someone doesn't do it before me.

I can't think of an easy way to do it. But your technique" could work if you "melt" the cube in layers. A cube of ice wouldn't just "scale" down. Rather, it would melt in layers, from outside in.

Alsmo, if you make a nice "ice" shader it could work...

Please let me know if you find a good way to do it. I would be interested to know.

Perhaps you could try what Lookey said. Make it melt in layers. I just sat down for 10 minutes looking at an ice cube melt and it does appear to shrink inwards. To add to the effect, try and put some particle vapour in there to make it look really cold.

If all else fails, you could try a new technique. Have the camera pan towards a freezer door and have the door open to reveal the words "Cool Savings" encrusted in icicles, and ice particles (or whatever that steam in the freezer is called) floating along.

------EDIT-----
Vapour! How could I forget? It's in the 4th sentencee of this post :p

funny you mention the shatter. . .i have about 2 seconds, so the thought has changed to a shatter effect. like the ice block is breaking apart. i also like the idea of the vapor. will probably do that in AE rather then maya. much easier and less time consuming to render for the amount of time on screen.

i have not done a shatter before either. been looking around to see how its done. and i am finding the easiest way is with a plug-in called Blast. i will probably have to do a bunch of reading cause so far its not comin easy!

if either of you have used this plug-in, can you lend a few tips? ? ? ?

Check out these free video tutorials on Blastcode

http://www.3dexcellence.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=230

Set driven keys
 

You should read up on Set Driven Keys. I think this would work for you to melt ice. You can set up a set of objects example. first you have the icecube normal. then half melted and then just a puddle. Then with set driven keys you can kinda have it morf from one shape to the next. This is how I would try to do it if i had to. Email me if this works for you i would like to hear about it or if you have any questions. slatamilian@yahoo.com

For melting ice, my suggestion would be to use SoftBodys.

This is what they are designed for, in that you can "Paint" your 2d animated weightmaps to time your melt perfectly:)

Good luck!

yes a great way to do it would be to add a lattice to the cube. Then add the softbody to the lattice.
have the particles of the soft body collide with the plane underneath, and add a gravity field on the cube. Then watch it melt away :)
By useing a softbody, it gives your a bit more freedom to add some realism like a slight bit of turbulence as it melts, to create some ripple effect.

would love to know if that works / worked for you. was also trying to do that sometime back but couldn't get the results I wanted. ended up using 3DS Max - they have a built in Melt modifier. It does exactly what it sounds like. :)

i suggest getting nextlimit realflow, its awesome for things like that.....its around 500 dollars

How about blend shapin' the cube to flat? Sounds quite simple...eh?

I tried to melt a cube of ice last night and got some mixed results.

I used a hi res soft body poly cube then applied gravity and collision with the floor and also a radial field that I squashed down sort of close to the floor.

What happened is the soft body particles were pulled down by gravity then began to spread out as they entered the radial field. The cube melted but I couldn't get it to look like ice. The top of the cube stayed completely sharp and cube shaped until it entered the radial field. Then it began to melt.

I think that if I used a nurb cube instead it would look better.

RealFlow probably does this very easily and very well but I think we should be able to do it using the tools that Maya comes with. It just won't be easy.:headbang:

Create a hi poly cube, take the sculpt polygon tool and start pressing the vertices down--see the resault.

Key is to take a lot of blends to control the melting realisticly.
But on every next blend shape press the brush on diferent place.
This way you'll have a lot more control of each phase of melting.

Another way is by using the softbody dynamics.
Lattices-particles-then use per particle attributes to control melting, try with ramp map and writting an expressions to control movments of particles.

You'll get a lot more controls by using per particle attributes then by using fields.

Try using 2 cubes, one wich will be deforming geometry and second,NURBS, wich will be used as a goalPP for particles wich will then deform a poly cube.That NURBS cube you can easly reshape and so affecting goal UV PPA.