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 particle system

There are a couple of ways to create an explosion. The easy way would be to have a flow object scale up very quickly. This way looks OK but the problem with it is that it’s way too uniform. The better way and the way we will be creating it is with a particle system. This system will be the initial shape of the blast, so it’s important to get it right. If you have never used a particle system, don’t worry. We will go through this step by step and learn exactly what it takes to create one! So, open Blender and let’s get started:

  1. First, let’s delete everything so that we have a blank scene to work with. Next, we need an object for the particles to emit from. Press Shift + A, select Mesh | Icosphere, and scale it down to 0.125. Make sure that you apply the scale as well. To do so, press Ctrl/Cmd + A and choose Scale.
  2. To create a particle system, head over to the Particle System panel and click on the + icon:
  3. ...