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

Simulating the waves

Now the part you have been waiting for – let’s create the dynamic paint simulation and simulate the raindrop effect! Let’s start by creating the canvas, and then we can move on to the brush objects:

  1. Select the smaller plane object and head over to the Physics panel. Select Dynamic Paint, make sure that Type is set to Canvas, and click Add Canvas.
  2. The Frame Start and End settings should already be the correct values we need. Let’s also make sure to change Sub-Steps to 5 to help make the simulation more accurate.
Figure 14.13 – Dynamic Paint settings

Figure 14.13 – Dynamic Paint settings

  1. Head down to the Surface tab and set Surface Type to Waves. We are going to be changing some settings in Waves, so let’s go through them one by one:
    1. First, let’s turn on Open Borders so that the waves don’t bounce off the edge of the mesh.
    2. Next, change Timescale to 0.30 to slow down the simulation.
    3. Speed controls how...