[Soc-2016-dev] Weekly Report #06, Mantaflow Liquids

[Sebastián Barschkis]

Hello everyone,

here are some updates on Mantaflow liquids:

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sebbas/GSoC_2016/Reports/Week_6

= Week 6 =

=== What's been done ===

* I revamped the liquid inflow. That is, I refactored the implementation I wrote
earlier which uses 6 raycasts and distances to the mesh surface from within and
outside a closed mesh. It's working nicely and, in my view, also produces more
accurate meshes than Elbeem.

* I found out why my meshes did not scale correctly. While looking for some
scaling mechanism and comparing my code with Elbeem, I found a small but mighty
bug in my code. The vertex getters in my "cpp wrapper" had wrong return
types (-_-). Glad I found this, it was really annoying me.

* Fixing the "vertex getter bug" allowed me to finally implement a scaling
mechanism for the generated liquid mesh. So I did that. Generated liquid mesh
and inflow objects should now match in size.

=== Next up ===

* I am still trying to figure out why faces are missing in my meshes and why you
cannot enable them with smoke domains in general. I'll keep looking for the
reason but also continue with other tasks.

* The cache is currently not considering frame 0 - the frame before any
advection. However, showing that frame at the beginning would be nice as it
shows the initial generated mesh configuration. To get this working, I'll
probably add an option to switch between "Geometry" and "Preview" mode (similar
to Elbeem).

* Start working on the UI. I have some Mantaflow options on my list that I would
like make accessible to the user.

=== Questions ===

* No

=== Notes ===

* The option for "smoke & liquid" (combined) will have to wait. I discussed this
with my mentor last week and we agreed to first get the liquids themselves
working. 

* Poke me on IRC or via email if you want to play with the liquids (viewport
should work). I can tell you how to setup a simulation and where crashes might
occur.

Best wishes,
Sebastián