Hope you’re having a good start to your week! This is our 16th weekly development notes for the FLIP Fluids addon for Blender! I’m posting this on a Tuesday since Monday was a holiday here.
Last week’s development involved almost no coding, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a productive week! I had a chance to do some much needed reading to learn some new simulation related concepts and brush up on practicing some math that will be helpful for future development. For the upcoming week, I’ll finish up a bit more reading and get back to code development.
In this post, I’ll cover the 2020 Blender Market Spring Sale, a simple setup to create a vortex effect, and our latest beginners guide video.
Vortex Effect
[gfycat data_id="imaginativesnivelingarmyant"]
The above animation is no longer available on Gfycat due to a false copyright claim on our artwork. The vortex animation can be viewed on our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.
Here is an initial work-in-progress test of the setup:
[gfycat data_id="easygoingnastyaphid"]
Optimizing the setup
Much of the fluid is out of view of the camera. We can use the FLIP Fluids custom meshing volume feature to tell the mesh generator to only mesh fluid that is inside an object (Documentation). This feature can save meshing time and cache size.
By re-running the simulation with the custom meshing object, this cuts the mesh generation time in half (and reduces total sim time by 25%). This also almost halves the cache size from 46GB down to 26GB!
This setup is also compatible with the free FLIP Fluids demo addon, limited to 250 frames of simulation.
Blender Market Spring Sale
As usual, we like to give advanced notice of upcoming sales. It’s been quite a while since our last sale! We have just heard yesterday that the Blender Market’s huge 2020 Spring Sale will run from April 20th to 24th. The FLIP Fluids addon as well as hundreds of other fantastic products will be on sale for 25% off, so get your shopping list ready!
Our new learning series, FLIP Fluids: The Complete Guide starts from the beginning using Blender 2.8 with a focus on all of the simulation settings, features, and how to use them in your workflow. Dennis released Episode 2b last week which covers the settings of the Inflow and Outflow objects:
Weekly Development Notes #16 – Vortex Simulation, Blender Market Spring Sale
Covering the week of April 6th – 10th, 2020.
Hope you’re having a good start to your week! This is our 16th weekly development notes for the FLIP Fluids addon for Blender! I’m posting this on a Tuesday since Monday was a holiday here.
Last week’s development involved almost no coding, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a productive week! I had a chance to do some much needed reading to learn some new simulation related concepts and brush up on practicing some math that will be helpful for future development. For the upcoming week, I’ll finish up a bit more reading and get back to code development.
In this post, I’ll cover the 2020 Blender Market Spring Sale, a simple setup to create a vortex effect, and our latest beginners guide video.
Vortex Effect
[gfycat data_id="imaginativesnivelingarmyant"]The above animation is no longer available on Gfycat due to a false copyright claim on our artwork. The vortex animation can be viewed on our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.
This effect was created by testing a simple simulation setup where fluid flows down a ramp into a circular curve for a liquid vortex effect. This setup was inspired by this coffee bean vortex simulation on Reddit as well as this real-life setup by Peter Cote.
Here is an initial work-in-progress test of the setup:
[gfycat data_id="easygoingnastyaphid"]Optimizing the setup
Much of the fluid is out of view of the camera. We can use the FLIP Fluids custom meshing volume feature to tell the mesh generator to only mesh fluid that is inside an object (Documentation). This feature can save meshing time and cache size.
By re-running the simulation with the custom meshing object, this cuts the mesh generation time in half (and reduces total sim time by 25%). This also almost halves the cache size from 46GB down to 26GB!
[gfycat data_id="altruisticscentedaustralianshelduck"]Vortex effect .blend file
Want to try this setup out yourself? Here’s the full .blend used for the final simulation and render:
vortex_effect.zip (320 kB) – FLIP Fluids 1.0.8a, Blender 2.82
This setup is also compatible with the free FLIP Fluids demo addon, limited to 250 frames of simulation.
Blender Market Spring Sale
As usual, we like to give advanced notice of upcoming sales. It’s been quite a while since our last sale! We have just heard yesterday that the Blender Market’s huge 2020 Spring Sale will run from April 20th to 24th. The FLIP Fluids addon as well as hundreds of other fantastic products will be on sale for 25% off, so get your shopping list ready!
Want to try out the FLIP Fluids addon before you buy? We have a free demo here: https://github.com/rlguy/Blender-FLIP-Fluids/wiki/FLIP-Fluids-Demo-Addon
FLIP Fluids: The Complete Guide – new episode!
Our new learning series, FLIP Fluids: The Complete Guide starts from the beginning using Blender 2.8 with a focus on all of the simulation settings, features, and how to use them in your workflow. Dennis released Episode 2b last week which covers the settings of the Inflow and Outflow objects: