PM - Mesh: RK

This is the place for the mesh’s fundamental settings. They directly influence the way the polygons are created around the particle cloud.

Type

The options:

• “Metaballs” are spheres which can influence one another to create an organic-looking, smooth surface. These meshes often show thick borders and require a certain amount of filtering or correspondingly high particle counts to achieve a satisfying quality.
• “Weighted isotropic” is the best compromise between creation time and quality. This mode yields smooth meshes with slightly rounded borders. Filters can help to achieve a very good, realistic mesh.
• “Weighted anisotropic” creates meshes with thin borders, but sometimes the fluid has a torn look. To compensate for this effect, the → “Radius” parameter of the attached emitter's “Field” panel should be increased.

Weight normalization

When enabled you will see better results in areas where particles are clustering, because the mesh polygons will match the underlying particle cloud better. Anyway, this option is not a replacement for a sufficient amount of fluid particles.

Auto polygon size

With “Yes”, RealFlow automatically adjusts the polygon size to get the best balance between quality and number of faces.

Polygon size

Smaller values take longer to calculate, lead to larger mesh files, but also more detail. A good starting value is around the default of 0.05. The corresponding → “Radius” value can be calculated this way: Radius = Polygon size * 1.7

Smooth

The default value of 50.0 is sufficient in most cases. Higher values (60.0 – 75.0) can be used to close small holes in the fluid or remove unwanted patterns. With settings of 80.0 and more, most details will be lost.

Surface proximity

This parameter determines the distance between the fluid particles and the mesh's polygons in metres. This way it is possible to inflate or shrink the mesh.