FLIP Fluids 1.8.4 adds a hotfix to correct a severe bug in the recent FLIP Fluids 1.8.4 (2025-07-14) release that can result in frequent render crashes and can prevent materials from being applied to the simulation. If you have installed the recent FLIP Fluids 1.8.4 release, please update to this new version and restart Blender.
Compatibility Notes:
FLIP Fluids 1.8.4 is officially supported in Blender 4.1 to Blender 4.5.
Bug Fix: Fixed bug that could result in frequent render crashes and prevent applying materials when applying workaround for issue #71908.
Bug Fix: Fixed UI bug where the Command Line Tools > Bake > Render After Bake menu could be missing a Skip rendered frames option.
version 1.8.4 (Jul 14 2025)
FLIP Fluids 1.8.4 includes many improvements, smaller features, and bug fixes, as well as official compatibility support for Blender 4.5 LTS.
Compatibility Notes:
FLIP Fluids 1.8.4 is officially supported in Blender 4.1 to Blender 4.5.
Blender 5.0: At this moment there are no known compatibility issues specific to Blender 5.0 Alpha, but this could change as Blender 5.0 develops (Blender 5.0 Support).
Added: Alembic import/export changes and improvements:
The FLIP Fluids sidebar > Command Line Tools > Alembic Export Tool has moved to the Blender > Export > FLIP Fluids Alembic (.abc) operator.
Added a Blender > Import > FLIP Fluids Alembic (.abc) operator to automate importing a FLIP Fluids Alembic simulation. This operator will automatically set up the Alembic import with the addon geometry node modifiers and transfer any exported velocity/color attributes for rendering.
Added a workaround to Blender issue #99293 where the Alembic exporter would not export color attributes to the .abc file.
Future Development: A custom written FLIP Fluids Alembic exporter is currently in development for the next addon version which can export a simulation about 30x – 45x faster compared to Blender’s exporter while using less RAM and reducing export filesizes.
Added: Operators to the Add Objects (Shift+A) context menu:
The FLIP Fluids sidebar > Add/Remove Objects operators have been copied to the Add Objects > FLIP Fluids menu.
Added operators to generate quick simulation setups for a basic water liquid, a thick viscous liquid that buckles and coils, and a thin viscous paint-like liquid. More quick liquid operators are in development.
Bug Fix: Fixed poll() error triggered when launching a command line Compositing Tools Passes Render when no render passes are activated.
Bug Fix: Fixed issue where if a simulation was started with the Domain > Particles > Enable Fluid Particles option disabled, resuming the simulation after enabling this option would not follow the Particle Export Amount setting and always export 100% of the particles.
Bug Fix: Fixed issue where Min/Max Float properties would not update to clamp their min/max values when changing one of the values.
Bug Fix: Corrected source file encoding from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 (issue #649).
Bug Fix: Fixed warning alerts on settings containing filepaths in Blender 4.5+ (issue #647 comment).
Bug Fix: Fixed Invalid operator call Blender warning that could be triggered during render when the FLIP Fluids sidebar > Auto-load baked frames and Sync with CMD options were both enabled.
Bug Fix: Fixed error that could be triggered by opening MacOS/Linux filepaths on Windows.
Bug Fix: Fixed baking error that could be triggered if the Color and Mixing Attributes > Mix Rate value was set to 0.
Bug Fix: Removed stray debug print statements from the Blender console.
Bug Fix: Fixed issue where Help > FLIP Fluids > Copy System & Blend Info operator would not find enabled addons in Blender 4.2+.
Bug Fix: Fixed issue where the FLIP domain could be unnecessarily updated to the current FLIP Fluids version when the domain was already created in that version.
Change/Improvement: Updates to built-in geometry node modifier:
For the most up-to-date additions to the FLIP Fluids geometry node modifiers, create a new Blend file in this version.
Geometry node modifiers have been renamed from FF_MotionBlur… modifiers to FF_GeometryNodes… as these node groups have grown to handle more than just motion blur. The simulation meshes will automatically be updated to use these new modifier names upon loading a Blend file.
Geometry node groups generated by the addon now contain a warning message not to edit the node group to help avoid having custom edits overwritten. Instead, users should create customizations by adding a new geometry node modifier to the stack. Alternatively, duplicating the modifier and making edits to this can also work.
Organized geometry node modifier inputs into panels for more recent versions of Blender. More UI improvements to geometry node modifiers will be added as the minimum Blender version requirement is raised in future development.
Added FF_GeometryNodes… modifier option to shade smooth/flat the fluid surface, fluid particle instances, and whitewater instances. This change avoids a bug in Blender that could turn off smooth shading during playback or when using default Blender render operators.
Change/Improvement: Updates to FLIP Fluids sidebar > Command Line Tools operators:
Linux command line support improvements. Removed requirement for bash terminal, improved shell escaping when using command line operators (pull #650).
The Command Line Tools > Bake > Render During Bake feature not supports Compositing Tools Passes Rendering.
The Command Line Tools > Render > Multi Instance render features will now implement a continuous frame sequence optimization when multiple frames are in the render queue instead of re-launching Blender between each frame. Note: Only applicable to single Blend file rendering with a single render instance and single frame steps.
The Command Line Tools > Render Frame operator will now default to rendering a PNG image if an video format is selected instead of producing an error popup.
Command line operators will now write scripts to the cache_directory/scripts directory instead of next to the Blend file to avoid clutter. If the user is only using the render operators and does not have a FLIP domain, the scripts will be stored in a flip_fluids_addon_scripts directory.
Command line render Normal mode now supports the Skip rendered frames option.
All .bat/.sh scripts generated by the command line render operators can now be re-run directly and will continue from any unrendered frames if the Skip rendered frames option is enabled. Running the scripts directly avoids having to open the Blend file before launching/continuing the render.
Change/Improvement: Updated the Domain > Advanced > Max Substeps setting to use a soft max of 100 instead of a hard max so that the user can set a higher value if needed. Note: Outside of extreme circumstances, this setting should not require a value close to or above this soft max.
Change/Improvement: Color and Mixing Attributes > Mix Rate value is now taken into account when computing adaptive substeps. The default value will often only require 1 substep, but higher color mix rates may require more substeps to fulfill the amount of mixing.
Change/Improvement: The Help > FLIP Fluids > Copy System & Blend Info operator now replaces the system username in filepaths with a generic ‘username’.
Change/Improvement: Newly initialized FLIP simulation meshes will now enable the Obstacle Properties > Cycles Motion Blur option based on if other simulation meshes have this option already enabled. This change avoids the issue of meshes not rendering with motion blur if the user initialized motion blur before initializing all simulation meshes.
Change/Improvement: Dates in the addon UI and product files are now formatted according to the ISO 8601 standard (YYYY-MM-DD) to simplify date scripting and filesystem sorting.
Removed: Color and Mixing Attributes > Mixing Radius setting has been removed. This setting is no longer needed as increasing this value is effectively a less performant version of increasing the Mix Rate value.
Removed: FLIP Fluids Preferences > Show Documentation Links in UI feature. This feature became out of date and was not often used.
UI: Updated Blender Market links to Superhive as part of the marketplace rebranding (read more about Superhive).
UI: The FLIP Object > Export Animated Mesh option is now copied to the Fluid/Inflow > Export Animated Target option if the target object is an animatable FLIP object.
UI: Fixed misc tooltip typos. Thanks for the reports!
Building/Compiling: Changes have been made to how the FLIP Fluids addon and simulation engine is built/compiled (See updated build instructions). Notes:
Added Alembic and Imath dependencies as part of developing a custom Alembic exporter. Ensure that these are built/installed prior to building this project.
Compilers now require full C++17 support (previously C++11).
Due to build changes and to avoid conflict when overwriting an addon installation, the fluid engine library and directories has been renamed from pyfluid to ffengine.
Building the addon using the automated build.py script will now package the addon as an installation zip archive (pull #653).
CMakeLists.txt file is now located at the project root to simplify building.
Removed requirement for building debug version of the fluid simulation library. The debug version has been used less over past few years of development as the simulation engine has become more stable. By default, the library will only be built and distributed in release mode.
Corrected cmake_minimum_required() deprecation warning for newer versions of CMake.
Suppressed misc false-positive compiler warnings for GCC/Clang.
Updated to version 1.8.4
version 1.8.4 (Jul 17 2025)
version 1.8.4 (Jul 14 2025)
cache_directory/scriptsdirectory instead of next to the Blend file to avoid clutter. If the user is only using the render operators and does not have a FLIP domain, the scripts will be stored in aflip_fluids_addon_scriptsdirectory.build.pyscript will now package the addon as an installation zip archive (pull #653).CMakeLists.txtfile is now located at the project root to simplify building.