Melt
Sag, drip and pour — wax-like distortion driven by one Progress value.
Melt sags the bottom of the layer and pulls drips off it. Drive Progress from 0 to 1 and the layer melts; hold it partway and it stays half-melted.
Three modes share the same controls. Liquid runs an actual fluid simulation. Drip is an authored deformer — cheaper, fully controllable, and identical every time. Particles is the original per-pixel simulation.
When to reach for it#
- Melting logos and titles.
- Candle, wax, and slime looks.
- Transitions where one element pours away to reveal another.
How it works#
Progress is the master. It is keyframable, and in the authored Drip mode it is fully scrubbable — you can run the melt backwards, hold it, or ease it, and every frame is reproducible.
Liquid mode simulates, so it accumulates state over time. That makes it look better and means scrubbing backwards is not free — the sim has to re-run from the start. For a rendered export it is fine; for tight interactive tweaking, Drip mode is the one to design in.
Parameters#
Liquid for a real simulation with surface tension. Drip for an authored deformer that is instant to scrub. Particles for the original per-pixel breakup.
How far through the melt you are, 0 to 1. Keyframe this. Everything else shapes what the melt looks like at a given progress.
How long a full melt takes in the simulation modes. Progress still drives it; this sets the timescale the sim runs at.
How hard the material is pulled down. Higher values make thin fast drips; lower values give a slow slump.
Resistance to flow. Read it as viscosity — high drag is honey, low drag is water.
How much drips differ from one another in length and width. At 0 they are identical and read as mechanical. Around 30 is enough to look natural.
Rotational scatter on breakaway pieces, in the particle modes.
Where the melted material collects. Set it at the base of the object and the puddle stays put; set it lower and the material keeps running.
How much material rebounds when it hits the floor. Small values only — anything high reads as rubber, not liquid.
Simulation detail. Higher resolves finer drips and costs more per frame. The default is tuned for text-sized objects; a full-canvas melt wants more.
Recipes#
A title that melts away
- Convert the text to a vector layer.
- Add Melt, mode Drip.
- Keyframe Progress from 0 to 1 across about two seconds.
- Set Drip variation to around 30 so the drips are not uniform.
- Ease the Progress keyframes out — melting starts slow and accelerates.
Design in Drip mode because it scrubs instantly. Switch to Liquid at the end if you want the extra surface detail in the final render.
Things that catch people out#
It is a simulation, so it has history. Jumping back in the timeline re-runs it from the start. Expect a pause on a long melt at high resolution.
There is not enough material in a hairline stroke to form a drip. Thicken the artwork or raise resolution.
See also#
Something here wrong or missing? Tell us in the community.