Render scenes with fluid effects

Fluid Effects render seamlessly with the rest of your scene.

You can render a scene either from within Maya or from a UNIX shell or DOS window. Before rendering, close all applications (including Maya, if you are rendering from a UNIX shell or DOS window) to maximize the amount of memory available for rendering.

Note:

You can create motion blur for your Fluid Effects if you convert the fluid objects to polygons and render the output mesh using Arnold for Maya or your preferred 3rd party renderer.

To render a scene with fluid effects

1. Set up your lights and render options. For details, see Prepare to render fluids.
2. Create a fluid cache, especially if you will be rendering across multiple machines. For information on creating fluids cache files, see Caching fluids.
3. Render the scene as you would any Maya scene.
   • For information on rendering a single frame, see Render a single frame.
   • For information on rendering an animation, see Batch render a still or animation.

After rendering an image or an animation, you will want to view the result. For information, see Open a file in FCheck.

Important: As of Maya 2020, FCheck is no longer supported on macOS. You can select a different default image viewer in the Applications preferences (Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences).

Note: Fluid Effects renders can be multiprocessed. For details on multiprocessing, see Render with several processors.