State of Blender fluids and probable near future?

Hi folks-
Esimacio’s thread didn’t lead to very happy conclusions. Houdini is a nightmare, with few and badly done tutorials (silent, short, low rez, etc.!). RealFlow is difficult, expensive, short on docs, and, standalone, introduces risk of import/export issues (at the least it adds complexity), and Max’s Bitfrost is part of Max, plus is also exorbitant and subscription-only.
The only semi-reasonable looking option seems to be LightWave with the $400 Deep Rising FX plug-in. Even it isn’t cheap ($1300? total), and would be risky to buy until the looong delayed “LightWave Next” materializes, or is announced as dead.
So, if Lightwave’s wave function doesn’t collapse, if it perists in this limbo for another year or so, we’re entirely at the mercy of MantaFlow.
So i have to ask 3 questions of Blender fluids gurus-
1] how good is (/will-be?!) MantaFlow compared to these above options?
2] will fluids ever register on Blender’s development teams radar?
3] will MantaFlow simulations ever interact with Blenders hard and soft-body physics? (As i understand it, there is no energy transfer between systems.)
II’m sure there are at least a few fluids wanna-be’s like me who are wondering if they should spring for LW and its plugin, or not. (Would latter route be far better than relying on Blender’s fluids, for foreseeable future???)
Thanking you in advance!

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Mantaflow work is ongoing (and major usability issues are being tackled at this moment).

Either way, it will have a far better quality than Elbeem (look at some the demos people are posting already and you can easily see why). There’s not yet any indication of it playing well with rigidbodies and softbodies yet, but physics in general has been seen as a candidate for an overhaul as part of the 2.8 series.

Actually Blender fluids is only experimental, you cannot use in production (except low quality effects). But if all go well will be a really good option when sebbas refactor the mesh generator, but I don’t know if it will need some months or a year.

I don’t know max tool, but Houdini and Realflow are better options in terms of quality, options,… Lightwave plugins seems similar to actual version of blender fluids. About rigid bodies, It don’t work and I didn’t read any about it in a future.

For production… it has some limitations. For example, you don’t have oceans, mixing fluids, rigid bodies. And the bubbles, foam,… are not at same quality.

But I suppose that if you are asking it here you don’t need a lot of quality in the simulations.

Well in the light of this, I guess many of you allready have seen this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHg-CHcflPM
So the good old “Elbeem” is still alive. I tried to do the same in Mantaflow, but it was a mess, not because Mantaflow is not good, it is me that don’t know how to use it properly

Realflow is difficult? It’s way simpler than Blender’s fluids.

well probably notting is difficult if you know how :slight_smile: But anyway, the Realflow is not an option, too ekspensive for most people.

Heres a quick little test i did with mantaflow… nothing fancy but it was fun to use

The perpetual license cost the less that an iPhone.

Not everyone can afford an iphone of the bat either… :wink:

Not everyone can afford the lunch for today. That is the point?

I formulated me in a wrong way. what I wanted to express was that for doing liquid / fluid and other simulations on a hobby basis as me.
Blender is free so that is the measurement. An iPhone cost way more that I can afford. For proffesionals the price is affordable (Realflow)

It takes literally two clicks to get a simulation going.
I’m not saying it’s not expensive but calling it difficult is wrong and suggest you haven’t used it before.

For some people, a large private jet is only a drop in the bucket money-wise (with your logic, they should be awestruck when people say it’s way too expensive for them). In other words, the rich guy doesn’t even realize there’s such a thing as people who can’t afford near as much as he can.

Maybe you or your studio is playing the rich guy here?

Realflow have a cheap license, cheap for all the studios in the world, indie or not indie. When you will pay a expensive license, then you will understand that a 900$ license is cheap.

For some people like you, that only search to attack, I understand that each message is a good target. But you are boring. What do you want? Must I tell “YEAhhhhahahhaha, Realflow is a expensive shittttt!!!” to allow me write messages without your noise in my ass? explain me, because when I have a problem with somebody in the forum I must suffer your messages one week.

maybe he better explains what he want his water to use for, last week i tested for myself the blender mantaflowfluid, and well it mostly worked. And there is still the old blender fluid…so what more could one wish for ?

Sure, what’s 900 bucks here and there, money is plentiful so we should all spend big.

Please realize that the majority of people on this forum use Blender and other apps. as individuals (and do not own a studio nor are they part of one). You would be surprised as to how many here barely even have a third of that amount to just throw at something.

1 Like

Well gentlemen, class warfare aside (too expensive! is not! is!), i can only say that i can’t afford RealFlow, and, on basis of some old tutorials i noticed, it looked hard (but then this is the primal left-lobe/for engineers-only split between artists speaking).
I can only hope that the Powers That Be on Mt. Blender notice that 2.8’s physics need work, and that they shouldn’t make Maxon’s mistake, and not add good native fluids.
Personally I’m just going to hunker down, forget fluids, wait another year or two.
Thanks for responding!

Being a Houdini guy I have to reply here, you can setup fluids with a single button in Houdini, you can even use your render card (OpenGL) to crunch the numbers, because you dont know how to use a tool doesn’t mean it is a nightmare, this said, Blender seems to be making strives as far as fluid développement goes, which is a really motivating thing for Blender users, but there is still allot of work ahead to get near what can be done in Houdini or Realflow, but if you are willing to put up with a bit of workarounds and some limitations, you can manage pretty cool simulations in Blender!

Want a short answer?

No. Blender, even if Mantaflow integration gets finished, will never match the capability, flexibility, stability, or speed of Houdini or Realflow. If you want bleeding edge tools, fork out the cash to support those fantastic R&D departments, or find some way to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to lure some talented postdocs over to Blender. Until that day, Blender feature development will mostly rely on the availability of open source libraries and published research, which are either always going to lag behind the commercial cutting edge, or be too difficult for most programmers to implement.

What could be some features or UI improvements that developers could realistically implement that would improve the current Elbeem or Mantaflow simulator? What are some specific features in the professional fluid simulation packages would you like to see in Blender?