FAQ - Meshing

How can I build a Mesh?

There are three kinds of mesh in RealFlow: "Particle Mesh" (also called RenderKit mesh), "Particle Mesh (Legacy)" and "Hybrido Mesh". Once a fluid source (emitter/domain) has been added, you have to right-click on the mesh node, and click “Build Mesh”. Another possibility is to click on the "Build mesh" button in the "Various Elements" section of the GUI. Please bear in mind that the legacy mesh engine is not multithread. To get a better performance we recommend using the "Particle Mesh" algorithms for particle-based emitters including HySPH emitters, and the "Hybrido Mesh" tool for Hybrido fluids. As a workflow enhancement, we also suggest to check out the RealFlow RenderKit option to produce polygonal meshes at render time from within your 3D platform. More on RealFlow RenderKit.

How does the "Hybrido Mesh" work?

Hybrido meshes needs a Hybrido domain node in order to work. The domain has to be added to the "Hybrido Mesh" node under "Nodes" with a right-click. There, choose "Insert domain" and make your settings. Once this has happened, the workflow is exactly the same as described above.

How can I get a thin mesh?

Thin sheets of fluid are not very tricky. Please make sure that you have enough particles and use the mesh engine's filter settings - in particular "@ Relaxation". When you use the "Particle Mesh" engine you should also try the "Weighted anisotropic" mode.

Are my meshes rendered if I use an heterogenous network (OS X, Linux, Win)?

We support directory mapping explicitly, so it should work. When a BIN file cannot be found, the plugin tries to pass it to "dirmap -convertDirectory" first. If this does not produce a valid path we look inside the search paths defined through the "rfSearchPaths" option variable (which is a semicolon-separated list of paths). If that fails too we try the directory where the scene (mb/ma file) is, as well as the directories of every mb/ma referenced in the scene. If it is not there either, we look inside the Maya workspace, stripping directories one by one, e.g. if the workspace is in c:\workspace and the file is "c:\test\dir\file0001.bin", we try "c:\workspace\test\dir\file0001.bin", "c:\workspace\dir\file0001.bin" and "c:\workspace\file0001.bin".

Since RealFlow RenderKit 2.5, RFRK environment variables can be added to the path files so they can be found when using heterogenous farms.

Is the 'build mesh' action multithreaded?

The "Particle Mesh (Legacy)" engine is the only one that is not multi-threaded.