Realflow 2013 Demo Videos

A couple of demo videos, with fluid simulation generated using Realflow 2013

Realflow Videos

Below are some of my Realflow videos on youtube channel - nayoubiko

First Look Realflow 2013

Below are screen shots of my first preview look at the latest version of Next Limit's Realflow.

Summary of features: [from Nextlimit website information]

• Improved Large-Scale Fluid Solver: Hybrido 2
• New base solver for incredible detail.
• New Splash and Foam emitters handled quickly.
• Enhanced Workflow: RealFlow Graphs
• Quick High-Quality Previews: Maxwell Render , with Photorealistc Maxwell Render materials provided
• New File Formats: Alembic
• New file formats allow you greater flexibility in your pipeline and provide efficient data interchange .
• Improved Fracturing Tool
• Improved meshing algorithms: RealFlow RenderKit
• New meshing algorithms mean a much thinner, more detailed mesh.

I will be testing some simulations and posting my rendered simulation videos soon.

Reaflow Hybrido

Some rendered videos using Realflow Hybrido. Lots of hard disk space 200Gb+ required, time about 2+ days.

Enjoy:


And a none Hybrido video l rendered:

3ds max text export for Realflow

Here’s what l do to create objects from 3ds max for import into Realflow. Realfow requires triangulated objects.
Set units to us inches
create a text – eg a simple letter A
Set the size to 1 inch
Apply extrude modifier – value 0.1 inch
Right click on text, select convert to editable patch
Select from the file menu, export selected – choose OBJ, check off Materials, name the target file.
That’s it. The OBJ file can now be imported into Realflow.

Realflow 101 Notes

I’ve been emailed a lot for this and l decided to put down sort of notes for primarily using Nextlimit Realflow 2012 together with Autodesk Maya 2012.

The focus will be primarily for using Hybrido. Click here for a PDF on Nextlimit Hybrido.

Note – you need a lot of primary fast and large hard drive space for the simulation temporary files which will chew about 200-600+Gb depending on the resolution [higher=more space] you opt for. I use 2 x 1Tb Western Digital Black Caviar drives for drives C, D on an i7 workstation with 32Gb DDR3 RAM.

Also except you own a supercomputer computer simulation takes time, sometimes 5-10+ hours or a couple of days. Be patient for the goal. Use scripts/command line instead of GUI for quicker output when you have a final setup you wish to create/simulate. IF using Windows 7 – turn off unnecessary background services and things like Windows Aero etc. I use Windows Classic XP faithfully on my graphics workstation even though its running Windows 7 Professional version. A decent graphics card is a must – preferrably Nvidia. Hopefully Nextlimit releases a version of this software with GPU support. I use 2 x GTX560Ti with SLI.

Realflow objects map perfectly to Maya, without much or no re-scaling required,

You need to install the Realflow plugin for Maya and activate this in Maya

Maya, Window, Settings/Perferences, Plugin manager

Note – Realflow is CPU and memory demanding as shown below

Below are my quick short notes. Default object settings used unless otherwise mentioned.

 

1)

Drop in a domain grid. Add a gravity daemon.

Resize this to 10 x 10 x 30 ie Height x depth x width – this just makes a wider tank.

Add a Kill Volume Daemon just a big under the entire volume size of the grid domain.

From the Grid fluid menu – GFM, add a GFD – grid fluid domain

Simulate

GFD, nodem simulation, cache

2)

Drop a Grid Fluid Splash – GFS

Reset, Simulate

GFS, node, simulate, cache

3)

Disable gravity

Add Grid fluid foam

reset, yes, simulate

Cache this like in previous steps

4)

>> Meshing <<

Add particle mesh Render Kit – PMRK

Insert emmiters  - splash and gridfluidemitter

Set polygon size and emitter(s) radius site to  to 0.1

on node particle render kit, check display mesh on viewport, and make sure build is set to yes

reset

simulate

uncheck display mesh on viewport

set build to no

5)

Mesh foam particles

Add another particle render kit

add Grid fluid foam to it

Set polygon size and emitter(s) radius site to  to 0.1

on node particle render kit 2, check display mesh on viewport, and make sure build is set to yes

reset

simulate

uncheck display mesh on viewport

set build to no

6)

Using Realflow plugin we will now bring in the meshes into Autodesk Maya or 3dS Max for rendering.

Note – with this low default resolution setting for the grid domain, after all the simulation processes above, my project file folder used space was 78Gb. If you up the grid domain resolution to say 4 million, you will possibly need about 300-700+Gb storage space for files generated mainly in the particles folder in your realflow project folder.

Screenshots: