Pearson Learn Blender Simulations the Right Way

Create attractive and realistic animations with Mantaflow, rigid and soft bodies, and Dynamic Paint
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80324-016-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 368 Seiten

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pearson, Stephen

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Professionelle Anwendung Computersimulation & Modelle, 3-D Graphik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents - An Introduction to Mantaflow
- Understanding Domains, Flows, and Effectors
- Creating a Realistic Campfire Simulation
- Creating a Waterfall Using Mantaflow
- Creating a Realistic Explosion
- Getting Started with Soft Bodies
- Creating a Soft Body Obstacle Course
- Introduction to Cloth Simulations
- Creating a Realistic Flag
- An Introduction to Rigid Bodies
- Creating a Rigid Body Physics Course
- Introduction to Dynamic Paint
- Creating a Paintbrush Effect
- Creating a Raindrop Effect

Leseproben

1

An Introduction to Mantaflow

Over the past two years, Blender has grown in popularity by an extraordinary margin. With the introduction of version 2.8 came a whole lot of new users wanting to learn what this free open source program is all about. More users are coming in every day and in 2020, Blender was downloaded over 14 million times!

This software includes the entire 3D workflow and there are so many things you can create using it. Not only is Blender used for creating 3D models but it can also be used for texturing, animation, rigging, compositing, motion tracking, game design, video editing, and, of course, the topic of this book, simulating! We will be covering all the simulations that Blender has to offer, starting with the fluid and smoke simulations.

Creating a fluid or smoke simulation in Blender is complicated and sometimes quite frustrating when you are just starting. From personal experience, I can tell you that trying to figure out how all the settings work in Blender by trial and error is hard and takes a lot of time.

If you feel overwhelmed by the hundreds of settings and values in Blender’s fluid simulator, there is no need to worry! The goal of this chapter is to ease you into working with Mantaflow and to help you get a basic understanding of what creating a simulation looks like.

If you didn’t know, Mantaflow is Blender’s fluid and smoke simulator. In this chapter, we will discuss how it was developed, what you can create using it, and what you need to get started creating a simulation. Finally, we will create a fire simulation together. Step by step, we will go through all the settings and render out an animation so that you can upload and share it!

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• What is Mantaflow?
• Gas and liquid simulations
• What you need to create a simulation
• Creating your first simulation

Technical requirements

This chapter requires you to have Blender version 3.0 or above installed. To download Blender, visit www.blender.org.

You can find the assets for this chapter in this book’s GitHub repository: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learn-Blender-Simulations-the-Right-Way/tree/main/Chapter01.

What is Mantaflow?

Mantaflow was introduced in Blender 2.82 and has seen many updates since then. It was first developed back in 2009 at the ETH Computer Graphics Laboratory. Now, it’s being maintained and developed by the Thuerey group at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

In Blender version 2.81 and below, the smoke and fluid simulations were two completely different things, and they weren’t very compatible with each other. When 2.82 came out, the Blender developers removed these two simulations and introduced Mantaflow. This was a much better system because it combined both the fluid and smoke simulations into one.

To enable Mantaflow on an object, you need to head over to the Physics Properties area (it will look like a circle with a dot in the middle) and select Fluid:

Figure 1.1 – Blender’s Physics Properties area

Don’t get confused when you only see Fluid in Blender’s Physics panel. Fluid is just the name used for the overall simulation. Once you select it, you’ll be able to choose between Gas or Liquid.

Now that we’ve covered what Mantaflow is, let’s take a look at the simulations you can create with it in Blender!

Gas and liquid simulations

You’ve seen me throw around the terms , , and , but what are the differences? As mentioned previously, the term is used to describe the entire simulation. Inside the simulation, there are two options to choose from:

• Gas is the name Mantaflow uses for smoke and fire simulations
• Liquid is just the name to describe fluid simulations

Let’s talk about each one separately so that you can understand the differences and how each one works.

Gas simulations

Gas simulations allow you to create smoke and fire in Blender. But what can you do with it? Well, you can combine fire and smoke to create a massive explosion. Other examples might include a flamethrower, campfire, steam, mist, or fog – there so are many things that you can create, and the possibilities are almost endless. The following figure shows what we will learn to create in , :

Figure 1.2 – Explosion example

Smoke and fire simulations are made up of what we call voxels. You can think of a voxel as a 3D pixel of the simulation. The smaller the pixel, the better the simulation will look. You can change the size of these voxels by increasing the resolution of a simulation. Higher values will make the simulation more detailed, but that will also cause the simulation to run slower and take longer to bake:

Figure 1.3 – Example of a voxel

In the preceding screenshot, the left simulation has a resolution of 8. This is quite small, so that is why the voxel is very large. The simulation on the right has a resolution of 64 and, as you can see, the voxel size is much smaller. You can also tell the size of the voxel by looking at the bottom-left corner of the domain object:

Figure 1.4 – Domain voxel size

The domain is the container for the entire simulation. We will cover them in detail in the section.

These voxels represent all the attributes of the simulations such as heat, density, temperature, and velocity, just to name a few.

What is an attribute?

An attribute is simply a term used to describe data that is being stored. You can take this data and use it to influence materials, modifiers, and more.

The smoke that gets created in the domain can be from either a or a . These objects that emit smoke are called flows. They are used to add or remove smoke from the domain. Using a particle system as the emitter, you can easily create an explosion, which we will learn about in , !

The movement of the smoke or fluid is controlled by the flow of air. The airflow can be controlled by the following properties:

• The settings inside the Domain object, such as Density and Heat, which set how fast the smoke will rise.
• Effectors, which are mesh objects that will collide with the smoke, restricting its movement.
• Flow objects, which can affect how fast or slow the movement will be.
• Force fields, which also offer a way to affect the movement of the smoke. Depending on which force field you add, you can give your simulation a much more dynamic and interesting look! For example, the Wind force field will give a constant force in the direction you point it in. This can be very useful for adding just a little bit of movement to the smoke and making it look a lot more interesting!

Now that we have covered gas simulations, let’s talk about liquid simulations.

Liquid simulations

Liquid simulations are very powerful, and there are many things you can do with them. Do you want to have a glass explode when it hits the ground, causing fluid to fly everywhere? What about creating a waterfall, waves, lava, or honey? All of this is possible with the liquid simulation:

Figure 1.5 – Waterfall example

These simulations are used to simulate the real physics and behavior of fluids. Unlike the gas simulation, if you increase the resolution of the fluid, it will add geometry to the scene:

Figure 1.6 – Fluid resolution example

In the preceding screenshot, the left-hand side has a resolution of 96; on the right, it’s set at 32. The left-hand side looks highly detailed with a lot of geometry, creating lots of splashes. However, the right-hand side has low detail, giving the look of low poly. Sometimes, a lower resolution might be what you are going for; it all depends on what you are trying to create.

The fluid can only be emitted into the domain using a mesh object such as a cube, sphere, or plane. Particle systems will not work for fluid...

Über Autor(innen)

Pearson Stephen :

Stephen Pearson is a 3D artist, graphic designer, video producer, and the founder of BlenderMadeEasy. He has worked in the 3D industry for over 8 years and has produced several best-selling courses on architectural visualization, Visual Effects (VFX) simulations, and animation. He started using Blender in 2014 as a fun hobby, but now he uses it to teach other 3D artists around the world. In his spare time, he enjoys riding motorcycles and creating artwork.