1. Realflow

When the animation is changed, float frames have to be rendered from the RealFlow particle sequence, thus the particles are interpolated.You can find an example how to use the 'Playback' envelope in the tutorial section. The transformation (translation, rotation, scale) of the holder 'Null' object is applied to the particles. Next Limit proud to present the new patch of RealFlow 10, is an industry-standard, out-of-the-box fluid simulation software. Fast and easy to use, it is compatible with all major 3D platforms. Simulate anything from a single drop of water to a massive tsunami. This patch fixes over 50 bug fixes and more. Release Notes (10.1.2.0162): Improvements.

When a RealWave surface a → “” tag is always added. This tag establishes the connection between an object and the wave surface, and cannot be removed. By default, all objects in the scene are governed by the tag's adjusted values, but this is not always wanted.

RealFlow gives you the abilityto control every object individually and control its influence on the surface. In this scene, three spheres will float down a river-like RealWave surface and create different waves.The scene setup with a rectangular RealWave surface and three spheres.Nodes ListAll scene elements can be added from RealFlow's 'RealWave', 'Objects' and 'Daemons' shelves:. 1 “RealWave” object. 3 “Sphere” nodes. 1 “Gravity” daemonThe Setup.Add a RealWave surface (there cannot be more than one RealWave node in a scene).Rescale the surface to your needs with the R key or the parameters under Node Params Scale. The surface should be a long, rectangular mesh.Create three spheres.Shift the spheres to the left of the RealWave mesh with the W key.Change to RealFlow's “Top” view with the 1 key.Align the spheres along a vertical line so that they have exactly the same start positions.Add a “Gravity” daemon.Adjusting the RealWave SurfaceAs mentioned in the introduction, the RealWave surface should have a river-like behaviour:.RealWave01 Node Params RealWave Downstream 4.0 (or any other value greater than 0.0).“Stream angle” defines the direction of the downstream.

Here, 0.0 can be used, because the spheres will move from the left to the right (= positive X direction) and this direction represents an angle of 0 degrees.If you want a higher mesh resolution decrease “Polygon size”.

The following tutorial discusses the use of Krakatoa and Frost to load, process, mesh and render particle data generated by Next Limit’s RealFlow fluid simulation software.The tutorial describes the workflow in Krakatoa MX 2, but the approach is applicable to Krakatoa 1.6.x. The differences between the two releases will be pointed out where necessary.While this demo was created using RealFlow 5, the same principles apply to RealFlow 2012 and higher.The RealFlow Test SimulationFor this tutorial, we will use a very simple setup consisting of a Hybrido simulation.A Sphere emitter produces a stream of particles which splash around in a box-shaped volume. Note that even though there is an option to save Krakatoa PRT files out of RealFlow 2012, we will use the native BIN file sequence. On the one hand, this will allow users of RealFlow 5 to use this tutorial, on the other hand, the PRT Loader performs some coordinate system conversions when loading BIN files that are more difficult to perform when loading PRT files saved from RealFlow 2012.

Create a PRT Loader by holding the SHIFT key and selecting “Create a PRT Loader.” option in the Krakatoa Menu. Alternatively, hold SHIFT and click the PRT icon if you have created a Krakatoa toolbar as instructed in the Krakatoa documentation. Add the BIN file sequence saved by the RealFlow simulation to the PRT Loader’s file list. Click the “% of Render” button in the Viewport rollout and select 100.0 from the list - this will set the PRT Loader to display all particles. Drag the time slider to see the particles moving. Go to the last frame of the simulation (in the case of the demo scene used in this example, this was frame 200).

You will notice that the size of the particle cloud is very small when compared to the home grid or the PRT Loader’s icon. This is because most simulation packages including RealFlow use metric units (SI) of meter, kilogram and second to perform their calculations. As result, one generic unit in this case represents a whole meter, and the bounding box of the particle cloud is just a few units in total.Assuming that the 3ds Max System Settings default to 1 Generic Unit = 1 inch, we have to scale up the PRT Loader 39.3701 times (3937.01 percent) because 1 meter has 100 cm, and one inch contains 2.54 cm. Thus, 100.0/2.:. Note that the following examples are from Krakatoa MX 2 using the Magma 2 system which has several features that are not supported in Krakatoa 1.6.1 and earlier. The basic workflows are the same though.

Select the PRT Loader. Add a Magma modifier to the stack using the “Add Krakatoa Channels Modifier (KCM).” option from the Krakatoa Menu, the KCM icon in the toolbar (if available), or by selecting the “MagmaModifier” entry from the 3ds Max Modifiers list. Note that the name “Krakatoa Channels Modifier” is used interchangeably with “Magma”. Open the MagmaFlow Editor. Press Ctrl+O to create a new Output node. (In Krakatoa 1.6.1’ MagmaFlow Editor, the Output node already exists). Set the Output channel to “Color” (In 1.6.1, it will default to “Color”).

Press SHIFT+V to create an InputChannel node set to “Velocity”.RESULT: If you drag the time slider, you will see bright colors in the viewport representing the actual velocities stored by RealFlow in the BIN file. Starting with the previous Velocity-Color flow, select the Velocity input and press the V key for Vector, then M for Magnitude - a new Magnitude node will be inserted between the two existing nodes. Press Ctrl+R to switch to Reorder mode - the flow will be reordered automatically anbd the word REORDER will appear in the title bar. Adding new nodes will automatically rearrange the flow. We now want to “normalize” the Velocity in the range from 0 to 15 (this is an arbitrary range based on the simulation at hand, a higher or lower values might be needed depending on the data). The value of 15 would be Velocity at which the particles turn completely white.

To do this, select the Magnitude node and press the / key (Divide) on the Numeric Keypad and enter 15 in the Default value of the second socket. (in v1.6.1, you will have to connect a Float Input with a value of 15 to provide the Divisor). With the Divide operator selected, press F for Function and then B for Blend to create a Blend operator. The Divide operator will be connected to the first input socket, but we want it to be connected to the third. Press Ctrl+W to swap the first and the second sockets, then SHIFT+Ctrl+W to swap the second and the third.

We now want to wire a blue color into the first socket and white into the second. With the Blend node still selected, press SHIFT+3 and SHIFT+7 to create two InputValue nodes with these colors. In the View menu of MagmaFlow 2.0, select the “Show COLOR SWATCHES in InputValue nodes” option - the colors selected in the two inputs will appear in the nodes.RESULT: At this point, dragging the time slider will display the particles with colors in the range from blue to white depending on their Velocity Magnitude.

Select the Magnitude node and press the - key (Subtract) in the Numeric Keypad. Alternatively, press A for Arithmetic and T for subTract. With the Subtract node selected, press Ctrl+5 to create a Float InputValue with a value of 5.0.

Rename it to “Min.”. Click and drag from the second socket of the Divide operator and release in the empty background of the editor. Select Arithmetic / Subtract from the menu. Drag from the output of the Min. Input node to the second socket of the new Subtract operator. Drag from the first input socket of the new Subtract operator and release over the empty background of the editor. Select Input / InputValue:Float from the menu.

Realflow

Rename the new InputValue to “Max.” and change its value to 15.0.RESULT: The particles with Velocity Magnitude between 0.0 and 5.0 are now displayed as dark blue, the ones with Magnitude in the range from 5.0 to 15.0 will be shaded as a gradient from blue to white, faster particles would still be white. Disable the existing Magma modifier. Add a new empty Magma modifier to the PRT Loader. Press Ctrl+O to create an Output node, set it to Channel “Mapping2”. Press Ctrl+V to create a Velocity input node. Press V and M to create a Magnitude operator. Press / to insert a Divide operator, enter 15 in the second socket’s default.

Press C and then V to insert a Convert ToVector operator. Select the PRT Loader.

Click the FROST icon in the Frost Toolbar (if customized), or create a Frost object using the Create tab and pick the PRT Loader as the Source. Hide the PRT Loader. Set the Radius to 4.0 units and the Meshing mode Zhu/Bridson. Set the Viewport and Render Meshing Quality to Relative, 1.0. Set the Zhu/Bridson Blend Radius to 2.5. Set the Velocity To Map Channel to 3 (we will need this later)RESULT: The Frost mesh will appear in the viewport in its own object (wireframe) color.

Note that this last step cannot be performed directly in Krakatoa 1.6.x, because MagmaFlow does not support multiple output nodes in that version. To achieve the same result, you will have to add multiple Krakatoa Channels Modifiers to the modifier stack and output the Velocity individually to each Output channel. Deselect all nodes. Press / to create a Divide operator. Enter 30 in the second socket’s default value. Wire the Input Channel into its first socket, and the output of the Divide to the second and third Output ndoes. We had to do this because the value in the Velocity channel is in Generic Units Per Second, but we want to display it Per Frame.

Assuming the Frame Rate is 30 fps, we have to divide by 30 to scale the Velocities down for display purposes.RESULT: The Velocity will now be copied from the Mapping3 channel of the FROST mesh into the PRT Volume’s particles, and the data will be visualized as colorful lines in the viewports. You will notice that these are the same colors we saw in the beginning of the tutorial, just shown as lines. As you can see, the velocities of the original 87K particles survived the trip through the FROST mesh and now live on in the PRT Volume’s particles!. Create a Spot Light to illuminate the particles.

Assign a White Standard Material to the PRT Volume object. Enable Krakatoa as the current renderer using the Krakatoa menu. Set the Final Pass Density to 5.0/-2. Enable the Lighting Pass Density and set it to 1.0/-2. Enable Motion Blur, check Jittered Motion Blur and set Particle Segments to 8.

Enable Iterative mode and render at resolution of 800x600RESULT: The 7.6 million particles look like a milky foam - these are 100 times more particles than in the original RealFlow simulation. Select the PRT Volume and uncheck the “Subdivide Region” option - we won’t need that many particles for Atmospheric Rendering. On frame 200, enable the Auto Key mode of 3ds Max and enter 200 in the Random Seed of the PRT Volume. On frame 0, set the Random Seed to 0.

Disable Auto Key.