Blender For Dummies » Chapter 13

Fields and Collisions

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:36:07 +0000

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.

Files:

wind_collision.blend

Soft Bodies

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:34:55 +0000

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.

Files:

softbody.blend

Rigid Bodies

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:33:12 +0000

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.

Files:

rigidbody.blend

Emitting Particles

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:32:19 +0000

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.

Files:

particles.blend

Particle Hair

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:31:25 +0000

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!

Files:

particle_hair.blend

Fluid Simulation

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:29:41 +0000

This is a very basic fluid simulation setup. There is a large cube as the domain, a smaller cube as an obstacle, and an icosphere as a fluid inflow. Trying to play this animation outright with Alt+A won’t work. You need to do two things first:

Select the domain object (large cube) and then go to the Fluid panel and choose a path where you want to store your simulation data. By default, it’s set to /tmp, but I highly recommend you choose another location to put it.
Press the large BAKE button in the Fluid panel. This will bake the fluid simulation data and store it on your hard drive. It may also take quite a long amount of time. Once it’s done, though, you should be able to put your mouse cursor in the 3D View and press Alt+A to playback the simulation.

After running the simulation once, you can start fiddling with the settings. Maybe increase the resolution of the final bake or change the fluid settings from water to oil. Have fun. This is one of my favorite parts of Blender.

Wheeeeee!

Files:

fluids.blend

Cloth Simulation

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:27:40 +0000

Here’s a simple cloth simulation. The grid mesh is set as the cloth and the cube is the collision object. Play the simulation by placing your mouse cursor in the 3D View and pressing Alt+A.

Like the other physics simulations in Blender, if you have an older computer, the first time this simulation runs it might be pretty slow. However, Blender will cache the results for you and the second time it plays, it should be nearly real time.

If you get a chance, play with adding fields like wind to this scene and perhaps animate the cube. It’ll look sweet, I promise.

Files:

cloth.blend