Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7-5
Enabling the Fluid object
You've now finished setting up the fluid simulation and are ready to run the simulator, a process also called
baking
the fluid.
When the simulator runs, it creates a new mesh for every frame of the animation, representing the shape
of the fluid at that moment. These meshes are numbered and stored in your system's default temporary
directory by default. On my Windows 7 system, for example, the path filename base for the fluid cache is
C:\Users\tony\AppData\Local\Temp\cache_fluid
. For now, let's create a specific directory for
each simulation example by replacing the
cache_fluid
string with
cache_ex1
. Select the Domain object,
andsettheoutputdirectoryontheFluidsimulationpaneltothetemporarydirectoryforyourownsystem.Click
Bake, as shown in
Figure 7-6
.
Depending on your hardware, the baking process may take a bit of time. The parameters are set low in this
example, so it shouldn't be too much of a challenge for your computer. If it is, you might want to consider
upgrading your hardware before going much further with fluids, because it gets only more resource intens-
ive from here.
When you bake the fluid, the animated sequence is created frame by frame. Some illustrative sample frames
can be seen in
Figure 7-7
. If you play the animation while baking, it should play back the frames as they bake.
The bake will take a few minutes. If you get tired of waiting, you can press Esc at any time and you will be
able to play back what you have baked so far in something like real time. If you do stop in the middle but want
to bake the whole simulation, you will have to go back and start baking from the beginning. If you want to go
through these examples quickly and don't mind lower quality than what you see in the figures, try setting the
Resolution to a lower value in the Fluid properties area with the Domain object selected.
