[Soc-2017-dev] Weekly Report #05 - Mantaflow Particles and Fluid Guiding

[Sebastián Barschkis]

Hello everyone,

my fluids report for week 5 is now online:

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sebbas/GSoC_2017/Reports/Week_5

= Week 5 =

This week I finished the first version of the Mantaflow secondary particle
function. While integrating it into Blender I also made some bigger
adaptions in the point cache.

=== What's been done ===

* First version of the Mantaflow secondary particle function is in Blender
now.

* To control fluid particles I've hooked up the secondary particle controls
to a new UI tab. It's currently very basic (only on/off and threshold for
secondary particles, FLIP removed for now) but should become home of more
particle settings in the future.

* I always found caching with the .uni a bit cumbersome. Writing them is
not very efficient and slows down the simulation. Also, and this is what
disturbed me the most, the whole approach with them does not scale very
well. For example, when caching FLIP and secondary particles together you'd
have at leat 4 files to write for each frame (2x particle system files, 2x
particle velocity files).

* The solution to this problem is to move all the caching that happens in
the .uni files to .bphys pointcache files. I started working on this and
made the first adaptions in the cache (functions that previously supported
just smoke now support liquids too) and in Mantaflow (added direct access
to particle data pointers - similar to grid access).

* Minor moving obstacle improvements in Mantaflow.

=== Next up ===

* Get some feedback on my secondary particle function before meeting Nils
on Friday.

* Caching liquid volumetric data with the "Pointcache" format still has a
couple of quirks. I'd like to resolve them next week and, in the best
scenario, end up with a version that smoothly caches liquids and/or smoke
in the "Pointcache" format.

* The "Fluid particles" tab is missing the FLIP option. I need to get that
back.

* Slowly prepare for "Fluid Guiding". The week after next week I'd like to
start with some coding for that.

=== Questions ===

* No

Best wishes,
Sebastián
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