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 materials

We have covered a lot in this chapter so far. We’ve learned how to create realistic settings for the domain, added flow objects, and created Foam particles! Before we create materials, we need to decide which render engine to use. For this scene, I recommend sticking with Cycles, and the reason for this is Eevee is limiting when it comes to transparent materials and particles and when there is a lot of geometry in the scene.

For most scenes, Eevee will render much faster than Cycles because it’s a real-time engine. For this scene, though, I found that Cycles renders about 80% faster than Eevee. This is because there are so many particles, and Eevee has a hard time computing all of them. If you were to turn off the particles, then Eevee would be faster. Since we are rendering the particles, I recommend switching to Cycles for rendering. Plus, Cycles will give you much better reflections and shadows.

With that out of the way, let’s jump into...