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

Setting up the camera tracking

The last step in this tutorial is to set up the camera so that it follows the sphere as it goes through the obstacle course. This is pretty easy to do:

  1. Select the Camera object. We are going to be adding another constraint. This time it’s the Copy Location constraint.
  2. In the Target menu, select Soft Body Sphere and uncheck Y Axis. We only want to follow the Z and the X location.
  3. Next, check Offset. This will allow you to offset the camera’s position to wherever you like, but it will still follow the sphere when you play the animation.
Figure 7.29 – Copy Location constraint

Figure 7.29 – Copy Location constraint

  1. You may notice when you play the animation, it’s not really working. That’s because the camera is following the origin point of the sphere rather than the position of the mesh.
  2. In the Copy Location constraint, there is an option for Vertex Group. You can probably guess what we are going to...