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 water material

There are two materials that we need to create, water and raindrop materials. Let’s create the water material first:

  1. Select the canvas object, and head over to the Shading workspace at the top. Create a new material by clicking the New button.
  2. Name this material Water so that it’s easy to find later.
Figure 14.20 – The material name

Figure 14.20 – The material name

  1. Set Base Color in the Principled BSDF shader node to a nice dark blue. If you want to use the same color I’m using, the hex code is #274C7A.
  2. To make the lake glossy and reflective, set Roughness to 0.
  3. Finally, set Transmission to 1 to give the glass look and IOR to 1.333. IOR stands for Index of Refraction. This is basically how light passes through objects. In this case, the IOR of water is 1.333. There is also a long list of other IOR values for different real-life materials, which you can reference here: https://pixelandpoly.com/ior.html...