SPH - Display

Owned by thomas (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 28 Jul, 2015 by Alex Ribao

RealFlow provides different channels to visualize specific properties of a fluid. These channels can be visualized in many different ways and dyed: different colours will mimic a certain behaviour or fluid type, e.g. fire or dust.

 

 

Visible

Toggle the emitter's visibility with this checkbox.

Detail

You can choose from five levels of detail to display the particle cloud: "Draft", "Low", "Medium", "High" and "Best".

Display type

These are your options:

  • “Point” draws the particles as coloured dots.
  • “Sphere” gives you an impression of what the meshed fluid cloud will look like. Please bear in mind that it takes some time to draw the shaded spheres – especially with large amounts of particles.

The size of both the points and spheres is adjusted with the “Size” parameter.

Size

Here you can determine the radius of the points or spheres that are used to represent the fluid particles in the viewport. Values smaller than one are also allowed, but will only affect the spheres.

Show icon

Each emitter is represented by a viewport icon and you can enable/disable it here.

Show arrows

Each particle can be represented by an arrow indicating velocity and direction. This will help you to identify misbehaving particles. The length of the arrows varies during simulation. If the arrows are too small please increase “Arrow length”.

Arrow length

This setting assumes that “Show arrow” is enabled and defines the default length of the arrows.

Property

With “Property” you can make some of the fluid's channels visible:

  • The range of values for each property will be colour-coded with “Min range” and “Max range”. 
  • In order to calculate the fluid's vorticity, please activate this property before the simulation starts under Node Params > Particles > Vorticity.
Automatic range

By default, the minimum and maximum values are calculated by RealFlow automatically and displayed under “Min | Max range”. The colour gradient is adjusted to this range.

With “No” you will be able to define your own range, e.g. for enhancing colour contrast. Particles with values smaller than “Min range” or greater than “Max range” will be displayed with the same gradient colours.

Min range

Here you can see the smallest value of the displayed “Property”. If “Automatic range” is unchecked you can define a custom value. All particles with values smaller than “Min range” will be displayed with the same colour.

Max range

Here you can see the greatest value of the displayed “Property”. If “Automatic range” is unchecked you can define a custom value. All particles with values greater than “Max range” will be displayed with the same colour.

Particle range color

You can define a custom gradient for the representation of the “Min | Max range” values. It is possible to customize the gradient, add additional colours, shift the colours' weights and distribution, and work with RGBA or HSV values: click on “+” for more options.

Please also take a look at → “Basic Workflows - Colour Gradients” to learn how to work with this tool.