EC - Hybrido Mists

When splashes decrease to a certain radius they turn into mist. Since mist can be seen as a cloud consisting of tiny droplets, a particle representation is not suitable to visualize this phenomenon. Therefore, mist is displayed as a foggy or hazy field of variable density. These densities are stored and can be read by appropriate plugins or tools, for example the RealFlow RenderKit.

Mist cache (.f3d)

This is the only available format for mist data. Please note that F3D is not supported by RealFlow's exchange plugins and older versions of the RealFlow RenderKit. F3D substitutes the old MTC format. Field3D is an open source format that is very common in VFX studios and fully documented. If you are interested in the specifications, please visit:

http://opensource.imageworks.com/?p=field3d

The RealFlow-specific metadata can be found in RealFlow's application folder on your computer:

docs > formats > field3d.pdf

Fields cache -OpenVDB- (.vdb)

OpenVDB is an open source library developed by DreamWorks Animation and can store voxel data. The format can fully replace RealFlow's native GFC and it is possible to resume from interrupted simulations or create secondary elements from VDB files. RealFlow's fields have to be converted into VDB-compatible data and therefore it takes longer to write VDB files. OpenVDB supports compression. Since the format is an open source C++ library, TDs are able to write their own import tools. Please bear in mind that RealFlow's OpenVDB implementation is tied to Houdini's axis setup.

RealFlow's Graphs engine offers nodes to load, write, and visualize information from VDB files. Examples and downloadable graphs are available here.