Advanced BLENDER Fluid Dynamics DVD

Site Admin Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 247

Advanced BLENDER Fluid Dynamics DVD
Learn everything there is to know about Fluids in Blender
http://www.cmivfx.com/product_blender_fluids.asp
(In High Definition)

cmiVFX is proud to announce professional grade training for the Blender community and visual effects artists at large.

Blender is the most reknown open source 3D modeling and animation suite; a freely available tool capable of producing stunning still images and animations. This is the first release in a series of DVD's that will become a definitive resource in professional Blender training. And we are starting with one of the most compelling and in-demand features: integrated fluid simulation.

Partnering with Jason van Gumster, an avid Blender user and active member of the community, we walk you through the intricacies and idiosyncracies of this very powerful tool; destroying cities, turning on faucets, and melting characters along the way. Blender's fluid simulation uses the Lattice-Boltzmann Method, which is attractive due to its simplicity, flexibility, and efficiency. It can, however, be computationally and memory intensive, so we provide tips and tricks along the way to help your simulations bake faster.

About Blender
Blender is an Open Source 3D modeling and animation suite that was initially developed by Ton Roosendaal as an in-house tool for the Dutch animation company he co-founded, NeoGeo. A new company, Not a Number, was spun off to develop Blender as commercial software. Three years later, Not a Number was forced closed its doors. However, by that point, Blender had a huge, enthusiastic, and loyal user base. Ton formed the Blender Foundation in 2002 and struck a deal with investors of Not a Number: If the community could raise 100,000 Euro in 6 months, the Foundation could buy the rights to the Blender source and ultimately open source it. That money was raised in 7 weeks. Since then, Blender has been in the hands of the community and has grown in functionality and usability by leaps and bounds. And the story continues... Download blender for free here

Joined: 21 Nov 2006 Posts: 63

Would it be possible to get the simulation time for each chapter and jason's pc specs (I just want to know if it's an overnight kind of thing). Thanks

Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 4

Hi Steve,

I don't have hard numbers on the simulation times for each chapter, but I can tell you that it did take a non-trivial amount of time. Smile

At the time, I was baking the sims on a straight 3GHz P4 with a Gig of RAM. Had I switched to simulate in Linux, that would have shaved some time off of my baking. I know that the tub explosion sim took just over a day, I believe (poor little machine!). Heavy inflow, particle traces, and increased subdivision really add to the bake times.

A couple other notes that are worth mentioning: as far as I know, the current implementation of the fluid simulator is single-threaded, so it won't take full advantage of a multi-processor system. I believe that there are plans to make it multi-threaded, but that's a non-trivial task and I'm not sure how long it would take Nils (the main fluids dev) to implement it.

Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 2

Hello,
I've just seen the «Blender Advanced Fluids» DVD on the web site.
Before ordering, i wish to have more information about the warning on reading it on Linux - i run a Debian stable - :
You say «Linux user can try Vlan player for ALL linux Os»
What does it mean exactly, i have to «try», not sure it work ?
I usually read some .mov vidéo, with vlan/mplayer. Do you confirm it «work» straight for a linux user to read this dvd ?

Thank for your time.

Best

Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 4

Hello Stef,

I run Gentoo on my primary workstations and the .mov plays fine in mplayer and vlc for me, so you shouldn't run into any issues viewing it on your machine. If you do run into any issues, feel free to drop a note here or via email and I'll see what I can do to help out.

Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 2

Hello
Thank Jason.
That's ok.
It's juste the «try» that make me doubt about the reading under linux.
If mplayer do it on your gentoo, it's ok for me. There is not trick to make it run.
Thanks you very much for your informations.

Best.