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 sparks using a particle system

Now that the simulation is complete with a material, it’s now time to work on creating sparks that fly out of the fire. This is very easily done using a particle system. Using particle systems in Blender can be very useful and save a lot of time compared to adding the objects in manually. It works by emitting the particles from a mesh object, normally in a great quantity. Things such as sparks, dust, hair, grass, and many more can easily be created using particles!

Now let’s create the sparks as follows:

  1. First, we need to add in a new mesh object for the particles to emit from. For this scene, a circle would work great. Let’s add one in by pressing Shift + A , then go to Mesh and select Circle.
  2. After you have added the circle, look to the bottom left of the screen and you should see an Add Circle menu. Open the menu and here is where we set the properties for the circle. We need to make sure this mesh has a...