iPhone 5S ad fluid sim - how did they do it?

Has anyone else out there been wondering since this ad came out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYsSiaBZmRk
…how they did it?


I mean specifically the guiding of the liquid metal into the form of an iPhone.
Because we’ve all seen plenty of fluid simulations of a solid shape liquifying - but a liquid solidifying is something I didn’t know fluid sims could do. I’m not too surprised that TBWAMedia Arts Lab did it first.

This got me really curious about when such a technique became possible.
They sort of cast the liquid into a mold, but it’s more complex than that because it starts as this semi-melted metal, and then liquifies off in these reaching tentacles (for lack of a better word), and finally takes shape as an iPhone body.

So far my search has led me to [Position Based Fluids] which led me to [this awesomeness].
And thanks to [this video] I discovered that constraints can be used on fluids. So maybe constraints are the key?
Would love to hear what you guys think about techniques for shaping fluids in simulations.

Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Particles and Physics Simulations”

I think about that every time I see the commercial, sadly I haven’t figured it out yet so I will be subscribed to this thread if you figure it out.

I think the following might be a good place to start: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Fluid/Control

Maybe not just sim or maybe not a fluid sim at all. Whatever the tricks used it sure looks like there was some manual vertex pushing involved. Download and watch slow or frame by frame. See the shape happening at top left of apple logo?


Especially with the super short shots / quick cuts in this I bet one could pull this whole thing off with the Animall addon (shapekeys) and maybe displacement of some sort for the gnarly lava look in beginning of vid. Lights / reflections and Cycles.

Would be easy if we could edit mesh in Blender fluid sim (we can’t can we?).

-LP

Interesting theory. Some parts do look like they could be modeled.
But there are a couple of aspects that I can’t see being possible with shape keys or AnimAll:
• You would need to actually have more vertices being generated in the mesh over time. I mean, you can’t just stretch a complex mesh like that forever without getting weird pinching artifacts.
• There are parts where the liquid metal comes in contact with other liquid metal and merges (inside the Apple logo for example). I don’t know how you could replicate that without either a fluid sim or hand-modeled frame-by-frame. I can’t see the latter method yielding good looking results.

Well, yes and no. Each frame in a fluid sim is an entirely different mesh, “baked” over time. So while you can take one frame of a fluid and edit that mesh, it will have no continuity to the next frame.

Another thing is (and I coincidentally was reminded of this by seeing it on TV as I’m writing this) there is another ad for the iPhone 5C that also uses fluid simulation.

This one is a bit less mysterious because I can see it being possible by dumping fluid into a mold object and then smoothing the imperfections out. Still a lot of work, but not completely mind-boggling.

Wow nice one. Yeah could be some backwards video technique in there too.

I agree with the points you made. Mesh flowing into itself and such would be hard to do by hand I suppose. About the sim it seems like I remember being able to sculpt on Blender cloth mesh mid sim and continue the bake from edited but that feature not in fluid sim. Or maybe it was particles not cloth. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked into any of the Blender sim tools.

The easiest way is usually the best way. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes. For all we know someone spent weeks roto’ing cliches out of the final. And only very short shots were cut together. There’s often technical reasons behind seemingly unnecessary multiple quick jump cuts, blurring, and stuff like that.

I wish I could make time to experiment with fluid sims/looks in Blender. With a fast card for rendering. Oh Santa bring me a Titan this year, you old #@%$!!

-LP

I watched the video about 10 times and decided to make an attempt at the effect in post #1, the circular fluid effect. I went with 1 shapekey which makes the fluid tip longer and flatter at the very tip, and pushes the blob back (See image below video) There’s a bezier, with an empty hook, which guides the liquid with a curve modifier. And two displace modifiers to help with a liquid feel. It’s an interesting effect and very cheap memory, time and disk wise. As there’s no sim, it’s only 1 MB including 1 image, a low-res environment lighting image. It may not be the perfect match for this commercial, but it’s quite similar and a neat effect I think.

(The youtube title thumbnail has wildly incorrect color levels, the video is fine though)

Blend: liquid-apple-sim-packed.blend (1.13 MB)


@blenderallday That came out great!

Thanks man. It was fun to make.

That’s cool that you took a shot at it!

I was just thinking that maybe a combination of your approach and what TiagoTiago suggested would yield something close.

I had forgotten about this fluid control. I had seen that demo with the Mancandy character a couple years back but didn’t put it all together until now.
Using a mesh with shape keys as a fluid control. Gotta try that out. :wink:

Very cool effect! I would’ve assumed a fluid sim was the only way, but I was wrong.

Thanks.

Edit: I’ve been researching and testing fluid control objects and have been getting some pretty incredible effects with about zero work. They’re powerful and could probably put my first test to shame. Slow to test though, as you really need to crank the resolution and bake for a while each time to know what you’ve got. Change a parameter or two, bake, drink coffee, repeat. I really need to get back to building my dream box. The fan on my laptop sounds like a WWI era lawnmower. :frowning: