Put briefly, RealFlow's “Spreadsheet” is a powerful analysis tool for a scene's simulation elements and nodes. They are indispensable for TDs, programmers, but also artists who want full control over a simulation.
With “Spreadsheets” you are able to gather information about every individual particle, vertex, polygon, but also about objects, meshes, and other nodes. User-definable rules will also help you to filter and separate your simulation elements visually. It is, for example, possible to show only particles with a certain vorticity or density and mark them with colours. With objects and meshes you will receive data about their vertices and polygons. Rigid or soft body show properties like velocity. This information helps you to analyse your scene, spot problems, and predict the simulation nodes' behaviour.
All this data can be edited and changed. Furthermore it is possible to apply your changes – even on a per-particle or per-vertex basis.
It is also possible to preview the → “Filter” daemon's output, open multiple “Spreadsheet” panels for side-by-side comparisons, and check a node's memory consumption. There are two ways of opening the “Spreadsheets” panel:
Layout > Spreadsheet
Nodes > right-click on a node > Spreadsheet
You do not have to close “Spreadsheet” during simulation, but the values are not updated in realtime: new values appear when the simulation is stopped.
Layout
The "Spreadsheet" layout consists of several sections (the entries are just an example):
Source (A)
The drop-down menu provides a list with the scene's nodes – the active node is displayed. When you select a different node the displayed information will change accordingly.
Detail - Filter entries (B)
This section is the "Spreadsheet" engine's core and allows you the creation of → custom filter rules to focus on specific aspects of a node, e.g.
- particles with a certain velocity
- rigid bodies with a mass value greater than a given threshold
- and so on.
Detail - Spreadsheet Table (C)
This part is different for every node, because every scene elements has different attributes and properties: objects consist of vertices and polygons, splines of control points, emitters have particles...
- You will find separate chapters for every node type (HyFLIP particles, objects, meshes, etc.) here in the documentation.
- Although every node type has its own "Spreadsheet", some of them do not contain any information. for example → IDOCs and → cameras.
Summary (D)
The → "Summary" area is exactly the same for all node types, but the displayed information varies. Some node types (e.g. IDOCs and cameras) do not provide any information.
Summary – Checkboxes (E)
This layout part is the same for all node types and belongs to the → "Summary" section.