Best solution to make/fake water flow between rooms?

Hello,

What is the best/most viable way to make water flow from one room to another in a 3D FPS environment?

To be more specific, please imagine the following setup:

The player start in a small room, with a single door. Water starts to fill the room, and eventually kills the player (all swimming controls, underwater visual effects, and breath system are implemented). Players must open the door to escape. When the player opens the door, water should flow to the adjacent room.

Is this possible in Unity3D (free)? How?

I made some research and found there are a lot of ways to simulate this scenerio, ranging from fluid physics to metaballs to clever tricks with good ol’planes.

I would really apreciate to know your thoughts on this kind of feature. How would you make water flow from a room to another in a first person game?

Thanks a lot!

What you can do is use a plane with a water texture/animation on it that rises in the room to be filled with water. While under the plane you can add images on to the screen to make it seem like the player in underwater. When the player opens the door it would trigger a particle effect that will look like water flow. While a second plane rises in that room to act as the water level, you can also put bubble/dust particles under the planes to add Emerson. This is the technique used for most AAA games, this is a lot less intensive than an actual fluid simulation. what you can also do is animate your plane to ungulate as if it’s water in a 3D modeling program.