Blender Underground

This week's challenge is going to be a little different from the standard "model this, model that" concept.

The challenge is for this week, is for you to do a creative fluid simulation, now this CAN be your standard water dropping into a cup simulation if you'd like it to be but I'm really hopping to see some creative simulations out there.

As for the car helper challenge, Week #4's car challenge still applies since there was so little response to it.

As always have fun with this and be as creative as you can and want to be.

Tutorial links:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manua ... Simulation

Begginer: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/SoCFluidTutorial1
Intermediate: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/SoCFluidTutorial2

Cool! I was looking for a way to work in a Flashdance animation....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flashdance_chair.gif

always wanted to check out fluid sim, though i haven't because i've heard that the so called "baking" takes a long time. by the way, exactly does baking mean?

Baking involves taking a process that's cpu intensive, cooking it into it's result, and caching that result.

In regards to fluid sim, the process is slow and cpu heavy, so baking cooks it into an animation that can play back a full speed. Each frame of a fluid sim bake is actually it's own mesh, generated by the fluid sim algorithm; so in this regard you're caching cpu intensive calculations, but at the cost of memory.

There are probably better ways to explain it, but there's my attempt.

is there a way i can resize my domain after i bake?

In short, no. You would have to re-bake.

This sounds like something I can have some fun with

Though I have already hit a problem... The resolution setting maxes out at 512, which on my computer says it would need a little over 2 gig of memory to process, which I do have. But when ever I try to bake the sim it crashes. Even when I take the resolution down to only needing 1 gig of memory it still crashes. I have to take it down to around 512 meg range before it will bake.

Even though baking at a really high rez would take I know my machine should have to horse power to handle it. Any idea what I might be missing?

System Specs:
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
Processer: AMD 64 X2 6000+
Ram: 2 Gig

You could try fixing a high Virtual Memory limit (like 2 gigs or more) use System->Advanced->Performance->Advanced->Virtual Memory->Change.

...

Ok Nevermind. It crashes on mine too and I have a high vmem (but only 1 gig ram).

To tell you the truth, I've never ran a sim with a resolution above the default. I think you'll need to look at task manager for your total available free memory, and don't go above that amount. Blender's just not allowing vmem allocation I guess.

...

OK I keep looking at this and I think high resolutions are going to be INSANELY slow...just my impression based on a few tests. I would just start with a low res and raise it until you have something that looks satisfactory.

EDIT: Let's see if Dave chimes in, he's our resident fluid sim expert.

Well I found my max rez that doesn't cause Blender to crash. Resolution 351 using 660.29 MB. One point higher and it cashes with a Runtime error.

I am no where near hitting my system resources limits. I have to wonder if its something in windows causing this or if it really is hardware...

I agree, hopefully Dave can provide us with more info.

Funny. The only thing a high res does here is take an insanely long time....Must be a Windows thing.

it took my computer about 7 hours to bake 250 frames at a resolution of 200, haven't tried anything higher than that. will hopefully post video on youtube later to night of the results


(Edit)
Here's the animation. I don't know why there is a glitch towards the end
(/Edit)

Well here is my peace for the show. It came out a bit darker then I would have liked. This is at a rez of 351 and took around 2 hours to bake 250 frames. However rendering took close to 12 hours at 800x600.

---Click Here---

I will upload the full sized version as soon as I figure out where I should upload it to.

EDIT:
And here is the full version. ---Click Here--- Warning, file size is 10Mb.

Much thanks to Apollos for hosting the file.

Thats really cool coyabbit. Keep up the good work.

Also, i was just wondering. What kind of processor does everyone thats doing the challenge here have??

I will be back later with some hints and tips on fluid sim rendering, Coyabbit. Might help you to understand why it's so dark. Sadly, though, I have to go to work right now. Real life sometimes sucks.

I'm using a p4 at 2.8 ghz with 1 gig of ram... it's a little bit old