RealFlow 3 demo out

[barpoet]

Such an awesome product, makes metaballs look like chunky custard.:twisted:

[3dg]

Too bad the demo itself appears to be offline...urgh.


I've got a potential project that will require a good liquid sim. I would like to give this package a good run through...i need to sim a thick, chocolate syrup pouring over icecream.

Gary

[ShinChanPu]

I've got a potential project that will require a good liquid sim. I would like to give this package a good run through...i need to sim a thick, chocolate syrup pouring over icecream.
Gary
I think RealFlow is the best commercial fluid simulator by now. I´m sure you´ll be really happy with it.

[plastic]

did they fix the horrible UI and crashes?

[Wizdoc]

Did they manage to increase speed of the software as well on version 3, or did they just add more features?

I'm asking because one of the key question marks before investing into the program - apart from the price - has been its effective use in smaller production environments.

[Para]

There's a mention of ~30% speed increase in the fancy flash movie found on their page.

[dotTom]

How does RF stack up against Maya Unlimited's own fluid sim? Better? Worse? Complimentary (different) ?

[FloydBishop]

It's a completely different system.

Real Flow works by creating particles, and then wrapping a mesh around the particles. If the particles are very close, it becomes one surface. If the particles seperate greatly, they become droplets.

That's a very basic description, but that's basically how it works.

[dotTom]

It's a completely different system.

Real Flow works by creating particles, and then wrapping a mesh around the particles. If the particles are very close, it becomes one surface. If the particles seperate greatly, they become droplets.

That's a very basic description, but that's basically how it works.
But I thought that was how Maya softbodies and fluids worked too. The basics are the same. They use particles math as proxies for vertex points and the final tesselation is done on top.

Let me put it another way, if you had Maya Complete would you upgrade to 'Unlimited or use 3rd party software like RF and Shave and a Haircut to approximate 'Unlimited's feature set.

Would this combination be a super set of Maya Unlimited? Would it cost less? Yes, I know they're separate apps so there's a hidden integration and additional training cost.

Any Maya users here? I'm probably in the wrong forum section ;-)

[monovich]

It's my understanding that Realflow has the most physically accurate fluid simulation capabilites. For general use, Maya fluids probably work fine, but in that last 10-20% towards realism (with fluids), Realflow is king.

IMHO.

[Proximus]

The download is working, you just need to enter the information required and they will send you a download link via e-mail.

Side note, I apreciate they offer a demo (unlike other companies advertising here...:scream: ), also without a time limit.

[coryc]

There's a mention of ~30% speed increase in the fancy flash movie found on their page.Actually their command line version is 30% faster than the regular version and version 3 is 4 times faster than the previous version according to their F.A.Q.

I have been playing with the demo a lot today and it is pretty quick. The demo has a nag screen that pops up every ten minutes or so and stops any calculations making the demo impractical for commercial work but otherwise not really a bother.

Plastic - I don't know what the previous GUIs were like but this one is very easy and customizable.

Wizdoc - I believe they said it was a complete rewrite

[3dg]

@proximus: Yeah. There sales department sent me a new link. I was one of the first to fill out the form, and the original link was bogus.


Thanks

Gary

[Proximus]

@coryc


Before you edited your post you were mentioning disabled functions or bugs.

Were you refering by any chance at the fact that after you run the simulation it does not playback visualy in the viewport?

[coryc]

No, there were a few things that I thought might be bugs or demo function or (god forbid) user error. It turned out to be the latter. I couldn't reimport the new SD info back to Lightwave beyond frame 59 but that turned out to be a problem relating to Lightwave's SDK not passing the total frames in a video unless you change the setting in the render options, not the timeline itself.

Another bug I did have, in case anyone else has this, was the help system was not working. NextLimit had it solved pretty quick. Seems I have a DLL with the same name registered for another program so it was erroring out. The solution for the moment is to copy the QT-m331.dll from the RealFlow folder to the docs subfolder.

To get a preview of the render, go to export central and turn on SD output and/or preview output. You can then scrub through the timeline.

[3dg]

OK, call me stupid. I messed with the RF3 demo for about an hour today and could not get a simple particle/mesh collision to happen.

I brought in a triangulated sphere from C4D using the SD exporter plugin, then created a circular emitter pointing at it. Then with the sphere i turned on dynamics but turned off dynamic movement. Then applied a collision daemon to the whole scene (all objects), but i get no collsion with the particles.

Is there a Quick Start PDF or something? I have looked at the online help system, but it is nothing more than just a listing of what the functions are. I just need a quick 1, 2, 3 setup to get started with my first collsion scene, then hopefully i can explore more on my own.

Thanks!

Gary

[coryc]

They have a lot os sample scenes and some tutorials on the site that are work downloading. They cover almost every situation. I remember looking at several involving particles vs objects.

[Kabab]

Maya fluids is really for doing gas simulations, Maya fluids can't be compressed... imagine a fish tank full of water and you add a drop of ink in it.. Maya fluids are based on navier stokes equations so they are kinda realistic. Maya fluids also uses volume rendering which makes it usefull for clouds etc.

There is also the pond / ocean half of maya fluids which is closer to what realflow does...

If you want flowing water colliding with stuff maya fluids isn't really your answer... If you want explosions coulds gas smoke etc maya fluids is good for that...

[Stimpy]

OK, call me stupid. I messed with the RF3 demo for about an hour today and could not get a simple particle/mesh collision to happen.

I brought in a triangulated sphere from C4D using the SD exporter plugin, then created a circular emitter pointing at it. Then with the sphere i turned on dynamics but turned off dynamic movement. Then applied a collision daemon to the whole scene (all objects), but i get no collsion with the particles.

Is there a Quick Start PDF or something? I have looked at the online help system, but it is nothing more than just a listing of what the functions are. I just need a quick 1, 2, 3 setup to get started with my first collsion scene, then hopefully i can explore more on my own.

Thanks!

Gary

you have to use the scene tree to setup which particles collide with what object. for a quick setup just pick "add all to all"
then create a mesh and link your emitter to it.

[Proximus]

@coryc


Well, thanks for the info concerning scrubing through the timeline, I was a little bit surprised why I can not see the update, it seems I missed it when I read the help.:)
About the help, mine if functional with no problem.
I did not do import - export yet, I was just messing around having fun with diferent setting, and I really like it.
For that import test, I need to install it on the other machine where I have XSI running and do some tests.


@3dg

In the Training/Tutorial sections they have some video with information also text and diagrames and you can download sample scenes to disect and study how they did it.

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