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

Understanding the Rigid Body settings

This section is all about the settings for the rigid body simulation. As always, let’s start at the top and work our way down!

When you first select Rigid Body in the Physics panel, you will be able to select which Type of rigid body you want. As mentioned earlier, there are two types – Active and Passive:

Figure 10.5 – Rigid Body Type

Figure 10.5 – Rigid Body Type

Active means it will have physics and react to gravity and other forces. Passive will make the rigid body stay static, but it will still interact with other rigid bodies.

Settings

The following options are underneath the Settings tab:

Figure 10.6 – Settings

Figure 10.6 – Settings

Let’s take a look at these in more detail:

  • Mass is where you set how much the rigid body should weigh in the simulation. As you can probably guess, the weight of the object will affect how it interacts with other rigid bodies and forces. You can type...