Before you render a scene with Fluid Effects, you must light the scene, and select the properties that the rendered images will have.
You can use the lights in your scene to illuminate fluids (real lights), or you can use a Fluid Effects directional light that only affects the fluid and nothing else in the scene. If the fluids in your scene use real lights (see Real Lights), your scene must have a light to render the fluid. For information on adding lights to your scene, see the Lighting guide.
Fluids can be self shadowed and they can cast and receive shadows.
The fluidShape node has a Self Shadow option under Lighting in the Attribute Editor. This is a special fast shadowing that is totally internal to the fluids node. Turning Self Shadow on causes self shadowing, even if Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows are turned off in the Render Stats section of the Attribute Editor.
All lights in the scene contribute to self shadowing, regardless of their shadow settings. If you do not want lights to affect the self shadowing, use light linking.
