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 fire materials

Now that the simulation is finished, we are ready to create the fire material. One thing we wanted to mention here is that for this scene, we will be using Cycles to render the animation. There are a couple of reasons for this.

One of the main reasons is that when using Eevee, lamps are the only things that emit light. This means that the fire will look like it’s just glowing and won’t light up the rest of the scene. Since we are going for a realistic simulation, we want to use Cycles so that the fire actually emits light to the surrounding area.

Another reason is that there are a couple of features in the material that only work in the Cycles render engine. So, head over to Render Panel and switch the engine to Cycles, then we will be good to go!

With that out of the way, let’s create this fiery material as follows:

  1. Let’s start out by selecting Shading Workspace at the top of the screen. The following figure...