There are hot threads in Lightwave forums about importing Blender fluid simulations as object sequences. The results are incredible! http://www.emphatik.com/3d/smdfluids.avi or http://jeremy.lwidof.net/downloads/lw_blender_fluids/jh_lw_blender_fluids2.zip As Blender is free, it would be also a great thing for Carrara. The question: how could we have an object that changes it's geometry in every frame (based on an .obj file sequence)? Any ideas? Is it possible at all? With a plug-in written for this purpose?

Yeah this was on the c forum.The pack of demos that you can download shows some awesome dynamics.I am sure some experimenting can be done.

Attached Link: http://www.benbus.co.uk/tmp/mercury.mov

They're impressive but you can do a lot with particles in C5. The animation at the link uses the mud preset as a starting point. Note: 500K mov file - Quicktime 7 required, and I won't leave it there forever because of my bandwidth limits!

I think C5Pro's particle system can come very close, if not match, the Blender fluid stuff?

Well I haven't seen the same results, but maybe. The distinct fluid look and flow.The soft body, rigid body, hair, and reuseable animation... stuff is great too. List goes on, but not sure how well all of it works. They really added alot.But man that interface loses me.I get to a point then oops.Just gotta admire the community support and devotion.

Sure, one can try to do similar things with the Carrara particle system, but I found the "importing Blender fluids to Lightwave" idea interesting because it is a generic approach: create a changing geometry animation in one software (because you have better tools there for that particular job) and import it into your usual application, even if they don't talk natively at the animation level. The Lightwave users managed to do it with an .obj file sequence (and a few scripts), so the question still stands: can we do it with Carrara? E.g. is there a callback to some kind of plug-in during animation rendering where we could import the next frame geometry from an .obj file and replace the current one with the new one?

Yeah, I take your point. The best tool for the job is always the best way. It would be a nice thing to be able to do (and as I've just read on the SDK list, not impossible to do with a plugin). Let us know when it's available. ;-)

Attached Link: http://fosterj.com/modules/xoopsgallery/cache/albums/album03/milkdrop.mov

You can use the blender fluids in Carrara pretty much the same way the XSI users are doing it. Export the fluid sim out of blender as a set of sequenced obj files, load them all into Carrara then show and hide them one at a time frame by frame. I followed the basic "drop in a cube" tut from the blender site and got this to render in Carrara http://fosterj.com/modules/xoopsgallery/cache/albums/album03/milkdrop.mov wayne k guam usa

Nicely done. I'd been wondering if that would work.

Attached Link: http://www.kawachi.zaq.ne.jp/kurozuka/akurodigital/

There is also the Metamesh addin from Akurodigital that has some good fluid like samples.

Attached Link: http://www.aceanim.com/FleaShow/Splash05a.mov

Here's an example of a splash using particles that I'm I've nade for my Flea Circus film.

All nice examples.The cube fluid looks really good tho.