Figured I ask for advice before I spend days trying to solve this on my own.

I'm setting up a scene and need to animate water running from a faucet. Not just the constant running but also when its turned on and off.
Besides this I will have a bucket with an overflow of water animation.
I am not sure what would be the best approach to do this.
Any advice appreciated.

Well, depending on your budget the best stanalone solution is RealFlow from NextLimit. As for it integrating into Vue...well I am sure some time last year i vaguely remember hearing something about someone making a plugin or something...As for animating that type of water in Vue I am sure there may be a way to animate the material to make it appear as if it is moving, but you wont get the physics needed for it really.

The best and most realistic approach is to use a fluid simulator to create a mesh sequence which you use in Vue with this script -> http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5089
Currently the choice of fluid simulators is either RealFlow (ask Forester) or Blender (ask me).

A second approach would be to use animated textures on alpha planes (this method won't be able to do the overflow though).
The realism of the stream from the faucet would be limited to a small range of camera angles (as is usual with alpha planes).

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2590875

RealFlow looks fantastic and would be perfect but the price tag and learning is way over my time, brain and budget (not necessarily in that order    ).

Tried to learn Blender many years ago but never could figure it out. A pity since it seems to be very powerful.

Think I'll have to go with animated textures.

Thanks a bunch!

There is also Houdini, the apprentice edition lets you export in obj, but worth checking out if animation is possible in this edition. And importing an obj sequence in Vue might results in OOMs.
Guess you might be stuck with learning Blender again...

Quote - Tried to learn Blender many years ago but never could figure it out. A pity since it seems to be very powerful.

Just in case it wasn't clear, I would willing to help you out with this.

Quote - importing an obj sequence in Vue might results in OOMs.

Very likely if you try to load them all at once (as Mark's script does), but that's the reason I wrote my script, which only ever loads the geometry for the current frame (refer to threads linked in previously linked thread).

I tried a short faucet animation once.  I used metablobs.  Hard to do but interesting to try.

What if you just made an object for the water, say a tube with some slight wavy in it, smaller at one end than the other and animate just the material you place on it?  It could be a glass/ water material with some bump or whatever. Then just use 'velocity of material origin'.

Quote - Just in case it wasn't clear, I would willing to help you out with this.

Thank you nruddock, I may take you up on that another time. 

Quote - What if you just made an object for the water, say a tube with some slight wavy in it, smaller at one end than the other and animate just the material you place on it?  It could be a glass/ water material with some bump or whatever. Then just use 'velocity of material origin'.

This is what I've done and a surface in the bucket with animated material. Looks very nice and works great with what I need right now.

 As others have said Realflow is great for this, and even though it looks complicated what you are trying to do is extremely simple.

Further to that try and find someone selling an old copy of 3D World magazing, it had a free version of Realflow on it, it was limited to 50,000 particles but thats more than enough for what you need.

Jon