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The very first node always consists of two elements: the node itself and a “Hub”. The node icon represents the element that can be used in a simulation. The “Hub”, on the other hand, can be seen as a connector, a kind of black box where all connections are merged. At this state, the hub is comparable with RealFlow’s former “Global Links”. Each further node will be linked to the hub and all nodes are now connected via this element.
Let’s have a closer look at the node symbols. You can see that the node has exactly the same name as its counterpart in the “Nodes” window. You also notice that the icon is coloured. This colour will help you to distinguish RealFlow’s different node types visually. The node colours correspond with their icon colours, e.g. daemons are red, objects are displayed yellow, and particles are blue.
When a node is in “Cache” mode, the lower part of the circle is displayed in yellow, if it is inactive, a red area is shown.
In the first image below you can see a typical “Exclusive Links” setup from RealFlow 2012. There, the “Gravity” daemon is grouped under the emitter and under the object. This represents a correct hierarchy. The setup in the second image is not valid, because in RealFlow 2012 daemons could not act on the highest-ranking nodes. Nevertheless, it was possible to establish these invalid links. The third image shows exactly the same setup as image 1, but with the node-based system. The direction of the connection’s arrowheads shows that the “Gravity” daemon acts on the emitter and the object, but not vice-versa.
Valid (left) and invalid (middle) "Exclusive Links" in RealFlow 2012 in comparison with RealFlow 2013's relations.
With RealFlow's “Relationship Editor” you do not have to care about hierarchies and considerations of which element has to be higher or lower ranking, because all this is done automatically. Your only task is to reconnect the nodes, because by default they are already linked with the default “Hub”.
How to Establish Connections?
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