Book Image

Learn Blender Simulations the Right Way

By : Stephen Pearson
2 (2)
Book Image

Learn Blender Simulations the Right Way

2 (2)
By: Stephen Pearson

Overview of this book

Blender is a free, open source 3D software that allows you to create stunning visual graphics, animation, VFX, and much more! This book is an in-depth guide to creating realistic and eye-catching simulations, understanding the various settings and options around their creation, and learning how to troubleshoot solutions to your own Blender problems. In addition, this book can also be used to simulate the behavior of certain physics effects, such as fire, fluid, soft bodies, and rigid bodies. You’ll learn how to use Mantaflow, an open source framework within Blender software, to create fire, smoke, and fluid simulations. As you progress, you’ll understand how to easily produce satisfying rigid and soft body simulations, along with cloth simulations. Finally, you’ll use Dynamic Paint, Blender’s modifier, and the physics system to create eye-catching animations. By the end of this Blender book, you’ll have created a number of animations on your own, such as a campfire, waterfalls, and explosions. You’ll also have gained a deeper understanding of all the simulation options in Blender, which you can use to create portfolio-ready animations.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Using Mantaflow for Fire, Smoke, and Fluids
7
Part 2: Simulating Physics with Soft Bodies and Cloth
12
Part 3: Diving into Rigid Bodies
15
Part 4: Understanding Dynamic Paint in Blender

Creating the simulation

Now that all the objects in the scene are here, we can create the simulation. But before we do that though, there are a couple of things to do first:

  1. Select the rope and the flag. Then, press Ctrl/Cmd + J or go to Object | Join; this will join those two objects together as one so that our simulation will work properly.
  2. Next, let’s add a Wind force field to the scene. To do this, press Shift + A | Force Field | Wind.
  3. Head over to the Physics panel and set Strength to 5000. We need quite a high strength for the cloth to move around. Next, set Flow to 0 and Noise Amount to 5, which will give us more variation in the wind!
Figure 9.17 – Wind wettings

Figure 9.17 – Wind wettings

  1. Place the wind force field on the left side of the flag.

Now, let’s create the cloth simulation!

  1. Select your flag and head over to the Physics panel.
  2. Now, select Cloth. We are going to start at the top and work our way down...