An Introduction to Mantaflow
Over the past two years, Blender has grown in popularity by an extraordinary margin. With the introduction of version 2.8 came a whole lot of new users wanting to learn what this free open source program is all about. More users are coming in every day and in 2020, Blender was downloaded over 14 million times!
This software includes the entire 3D workflow and there are so many things you can create using it. Not only is Blender used for creating 3D models but it can also be used for texturing, animation, rigging, compositing, motion tracking, game design, video editing, and, of course, the topic of this book, simulating! We will be covering all the simulations that Blender has to offer, starting with the fluid and smoke simulations.
Creating a fluid or smoke simulation in Blender is complicated and sometimes quite frustrating when you are just starting. From personal experience, I can tell you that trying to figure out how all the settings work in Blender by trial and error is hard and takes a lot of time.
If you feel overwhelmed by the hundreds of settings and values in Blender’s fluid simulator, there is no need to worry! The goal of this chapter is to ease you into working with Mantaflow and to help you get a basic understanding of what creating a simulation looks like.
If you didn’t know, Mantaflow is Blender’s fluid and smoke simulator. In this chapter, we will discuss how it was developed, what you can create using it, and what you need to get started creating a simulation. Finally, we will create a fire simulation together. Step by step, we will go through all the settings and render out an animation so that you can upload and share it!
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- What is Mantaflow?
- Gas and liquid simulations
- What you need to create a simulation
- Creating your first simulation