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 Domains, Flows, and Effectors

Now that we have covered the basics of Mantaflow, it’s time to get a little more advanced! In this chapter, we will be diving deep into Blender and learning all about domains, flows, and effectors – all the objects that make up the simulation.

There are hundreds of settings and values to tweak to your liking and it can be frustrating not knowing what they are or how to use them. The goal of this chapter is to give you a technical understanding of Mantaflow. That way, you will know exactly what all the settings and values do. We will be going through each setting, and I will give a brief description of what it does! This means that you can create your own simulations without having to do a lot of guesswork and that you always have a reference just in case you forget what a setting does.

We will start by understanding what a domain is and all the settings inside that object. We will cover both gas and liquid simulations...