RE - Connections

The connections between nodes are not just fixed lines, but dynamic joints with their own right-click menu. The lines also directly tell you which elements can be connected or not.

When you add an element to the scene it will immediately appear in the “Relationship Editor” in form of a graphical symbol. It does not matter whether the element is added from the “Icon Bar”, the menu or the right-click menus – another option is to use the “Tab” menu: imported objects will be drawn to the canvas as well. When you delete an element from the editor it will also be deleted from the scene. The same applies for nodes removed from the “Nodes” window and the viewport.

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.

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?

Creating a connection between nodes is as easy as the former drag-and-drop system: click on the outer, coloured circle of a node's symbol and draw a line from this node to another icon. An alternative way is to Ctrl-click somewhere inside the node's symbol and draw the line. When you draw a new connection, direction does not play a role at all. A connection between a “Cube” and a “Gravity” daemon can be established from both nodes. If the connection is valid you will see a green line. Invalid links are grey. Please note that you do not have to hit exactly the outer circle of the target node when you draw a connection. It is enough to point the line somewhere on the icon and release the mouse button. In many cases you will also see grey node icons while drawing a line. This visual feedback means that the grey nodes do not accept connections in this particular case.

A single node can also have more than one connection and you can draw as many lines to other nodes as required.

How to Remove Connections?

It is, of course, possible that connections will have to be removed and there are several ways to do this. The first method is to click directly on a link. The highlighted connection can now easily be deleted with the Del key. Another option is to right-click on a link and choose: “Remove” from the menu. Finally, a connection can be removed with a right-click on the node. In the menu, go to “Connections”, choose the desired node pair and click on “Remove”. If you have multi-selected several links they can also be deleted with the “Remove selected” from the editor's “Icon Bar”.

Nodes linked via a “Hub” can also be easily disconnected by deleting the hub node. If you wish to remove all links of a node at once, right-click on the appropriate node icon and choose Connection > Disconnect all.