Crown Splash Simulation with Houdini FLIP
Personal project, 2025 – simulated with Houdini FLIP, rendered with Octane Render in Cinema 4D, compositing in After Effects.
About the project
This personal project from 2025 shows a crown splash simulation: liquid hits the surface in a mug, rises as a ring-shaped wall and breaks up into individual droplets at the rim. A second, much more chaotic splash then bursts out of the mug.
The goal was to show my skills with Houdini FLIP Fluids. A crown splash is a rewarding but demanding subject – the eye knows the shape well from slow-motion footage and immediately notices when the timing, the thickness of the liquid wall or the way the droplets break away is off. The scene is entirely CGI, including the mug, the table and the brick wall in the background.
Technique
The simulation was done with Houdini's FLIP solver. Resolution was key: only with a sufficiently fine particle density does the thin liquid wall form cleanly and break into droplets at the tips convincingly, instead of tearing open too early.
The meshed simulation was assembled in Cinema 4D with the mug, table and environment and rendered with Octane Render – with a shallow depth of field, like a real macro slow-motion shot. Compositing and colour grading for the final look were done in After Effects.
More stills
