This setup is similar to the one in Figure 13-4. There’s an Empty producing a fairly massive wind force that’s pushing the particles towards a giant plane. That plane is configured to act as a collision object, so the particles bounce off of it and then get blown back around it by the wind. Put your mouse cursor in the 3D View and press Alt+A to watch it in action.
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This is a simple soft body simulation with a Suzanne head. Test it out by putting your mouse cursor in the 3D View and pressing Alt+A. One thing you might notice is that Suzanne’s eyes pop out of her head. This is because her mesh is not an entirely closed mesh. The eyes are actually separate islands of vertices. This means that they’ll react to physics independently of the other bits in the mesh. Not a huge ordeal for this simulation, but definitely something to keep in mind when you’re building your own.
Also note that the first time you run this simulation it might be pretty slow. However, after running through it once, Blender caches the results, so the second playback should be at nearly real time.
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This simple arrangement uses the rigid body physics in the integrated Blender game engine. To see it work, move your mouse into the 3D View and press P. The game engine will start and you’ll see the Suzanne head and the cube fall on to the plane and bounce around a bit. You can quit the game engine by pressing Esc. If you edit either of these meshes, and restart the game engine, you should see totally different results. Go ahead and play with these settings. It’s nearly addictive.
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This is a simple particle setup to emit some particles from a grid mesh. To see it in action, put your mouse cursor in the 3D View and press Alt+A.
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A simple example of particle hair in Blender. Be sure to take a look at the Material buttons for the hair object as well. It should help explain the cool colors when you render (F12).
Everyone loves a blue hairball!
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