RealFlow Wisdom

Script to set random color to all nodes.

jalixko — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:02:59 +0000

I did this stupid script to set random colors to all nodes in the scene to avoid the sad default grey, recommended for scenes with a lot of geometry objects.

Grid to bin sequence exporter.

jalixko — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:33:34 +0000

More than one time I have needed to extract the particles from a Grid Domain to use them in another platform or simply to render them using RF Render Kit. So, this is a really useful and simple script (updated) for all those who need to export Grids to particle .bin sequence and forgot to switch it on in the Export Central Panel. Thanks to Next Limit team.

Evaporation

jalixko — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:38:13 +0000

Having a look to this reference video for a possible project I get to work on it.

At the beginning I tried to get something similar in RealFlow using a simple set up with filter daemons and supported by some python scripting which generate some trail particles, the main concept was to get three layers of fluids, water, snow and vapour to render them later using Render Kit.

Once finished the simulation I started to test with Mental ray/Render Kit using Mesher, Particler and Cloud in Maya. Although I did not spend a lot of time on the vapour particles to get a good behaviour as mist I think it could get better results transferring the particles to a Mist Domain with a high-resolution to obtain a good volumetric effect.

The fact is you can get really good results using Maya Fluids and RealFlow simulations, in this example I used two layers of particles rendered by using RFRK and another layer using the snow particles from RealFlow as Fluid emitter in Maya.

I want thanks to Florian Koebisch from NextLimit forum his advises about Maya Fluids.

First contact with Rigid Bodies.

jalixko — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:21:46 +0000

From the release of RealFlow 5.0 I haven´t the opportunity to play a lot with its rigid bodies solver “Caronte”.

In the last days I had to do some tests for a commercial and have to say I am getting very good impressions with the stability of the new solver, the Fracture tool is really appreciated.

The scene is a simple primitive cone fractured in 3700≈ pieces of bath salt and affected by a DSpline daemon.

This is a first contact.

D_Splines and Grids

jalixko — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:29:37 +0000

This post is not very interesting, but I was playing a little bit with Daemons and Grids and get this paint fiber look.

I got this fluid using a grid and a D_Spline daemon, nothing special! It was rendered with Mental ray RFRK Mesher.

Preview

Render

Print your settings

jalixko — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:08:05 +0000

A good way to remember your settings when doing testings is printing them in the preview videos.

Switch on the option “Show Preview Caption” in the menu “View”, copy and paste this lines in a new script in the simulationPre tab, you can add whatever parameters you want:

emitter = scene.getEmitter("yourEmitter01")

visc = emitter.getParameter("Viscosity")

st = emitter.getParameter("Surface Tension")

scene.setPreviewCaption("Viscosity: " + str(visc) + "\n" + "Surface Tension: " + str(st))

Whirlpools

jalixko — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:57:40 +0000

These days I was looking for information about whirlpools. Here some links:

10 Magnificent Maelstroms

Magnificent Whirlpools and Maelstroms: The Nature’s Own Jacuzzis

Whirlpool Facts and Myths

Giant ocean whirlpools puzzle scientists

I found some threads in the forums and was playing arround this subject. By now I have not great results but think it is quite easy to get interesting results using vortex and DSplines daemons.

First test I did was with partcle base fluids, the problem is you need a lot of particles.

These are some tests using HYBRIDO where you can generate a lot of particles, in this tests I have used few cells so they are not showing a lot. In the first example I used a simple vortex, the other three a DSplaine gives you more control and let you play with several configurations, animating parameters and its layers. Now I am working on the other layers of the simulation, splashes , spray, foam, etc.

Some test scenes.

Looking for presets

jalixko — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 01:17:33 +0000

Two years ago I wrote an article talking about Presets for RF4. This article is off-line now. Anyway that article was based on RF4 but due to some changes in RF5 the performances are different now and more accuracy. You can see some of the videos I did in the RF YouTube channel (Prefix “Preset”).

I would be very glad to reproduce that article here but I have not access to it by now, for that reason I was making several sims to compare for my own. (Videos are HD, it is recommended see ing the videos at full screen. The other parameters not evaluated are set by default)

These are the results.

Density: 250, 1.000, 3.000, 1.0000

The Densities does not use to affect the motion of the fluid, you can only see the difference using two different fluids with different densities or involving dynamic bodies in the simulation, in the next example the object has a mass of 4375 units, approximately same density as water (1000 units) the fluid has different densities.

Density: 100, 1.000, 10.000, 50.000

The different Viscosities are more evident in the next examples.

Viscosity: 3, 5, 25, 100

In the case of the Surface Tension you can see more particles are grouped when higher values are used in the surface tension parameter.

Surface Tension: 2, 10, 25, 100

But the best way to see the effect is using less particles.

Surface Tension: 0, 1, 10, 100, 1.000, 10.000, 100.000

Export node selected to XML format, save your presets!

jalixko — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:00:30 +0000

The Exporting XML option that you can found in the Export/Import menus is a good way for saving your Presets for any node in the scene. I use it a lot in my projects, for this reason I did this simple script for exporting to XML the node selected. The script creates a xml folder in the RF project where all xml files will be saved and let you choose two types of suffixes, Time in seconds or user defined.

Size does matter!

jalixko — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:21:19 +0000

This week I made a very big and newbie error in a set up scene, the grid domain is too big. Next pictures show the difference between adjusting the GD to the full scene and only to the simulation volume.

Always try to adjust the GD to the simulation volume and you will get a better simulation performance, in this case I get double number of particles, with less number of cells and more frames simulated and approximately using same time for the calculation (Simulated in a quad-core).

Resolution: 100.000.000, Simulated Frames: 102, Simulation Time: 14h 38m, Particles: 4.732.376

Resolution: 50.000.000, Simulated Frames: 176, Simulation Time: 15h 47m, Particles: 9.479.624