EC - Particle Meshes

Meshes can be described as three-dimensional hulls around particle clouds, representing the volume of simulated fluids. Such a fluid mesh can be exported to a 3D program and then textured or shaded. RealFlow provides three different meshing methods:

• Particle meshes (formerly: Particle Mesh RK)

• Particle meshes Legacy (formerly: Particle Mesh Standard)

• Hybrido meshes (formerly: Grid Mesh)

The export resources of the RenderKit mesh engine can be adjusted here and these are the available file formats:

Mesh cache (.bin)

The most common and entirely supported file format is BIN. The exchange plugins are able to read BIN file sequences and display them in your favourite 3D application. RealFlow is also capable of showing BINs to enable playback and previews. Although mesh BINs share exactly the same extension as their particle-based counterparts, both formats are not interchangeable, because they have completely different internal structures. RealFlow writes one BIN file per frame and mesh.

Mesh sequence (.abc)

It is also possible to store mesh sequences as a series of ABC files. Please note that RealFlow's Alembic files do not support any data channels (e.g. velocity, age, and so on) at the moment. The only format that provides this option is MD.

Mesh sequence (.ass)

This is the scene description format of Solid Angel's Arnold render engine. You can export simulation data to native ASS files for direct use inside Arnold.

Mesh sequence (.md)

Like BIN files, RealFlow writes out one MD per frame and mesh node, but with this format it is possible to store different magnitudes that can be translated into vertex maps and used for shading purposes. The MD format is supported by some exchange plugins (e.g. for Cinema 4D) and the RealFlow RenderKit. Simply choose from the list which magnitude you want to store, but please do not forget to enable the “texture” option, because otherwise the mesh's UV coordinates will not be applied. If you want to store vorticity data please enable this feature before simulating:

Emitter > Node Params > Particles > Compute Vorticity > Yes

Mesh sequence (.obj)

OBJ is another widespread format and available with any 3D modelling software. When this resource is active, RealFlow writes out one OBJ file per frame. The files can then be exchanged with other users or loaded into your 3D application, but please bear in mind that many programs do not support OBJ sequences, only single files.