[Soc-2017-dev] Weekly Report #01 - Mantaflow Particles and Fluid Guiding

[Sebastián Barschkis]

Hello everyone,

here is a short report on what I did this week. Just as last year, you'll
also find a more interactive report in the Wiki (e.g. with commit links and
sometimes images/videos).

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sebbas/GSoC_2017/Reports/Week_1

= Week 1 =

Part one of my particles goal for this GSoC is to get FLIP particles into
the Blender viewport. This I week I worked on the data exchange and wrote
some API functions.

=== What's been done ===

* There is now a helper function to read particle data from Mantaflow .uni
files. I approached it the same way I did when creating the mesh reading
function (.bobj.gz files). The load() functions from Mantaflow were also
very useful here.

* Several generic API functions needed to be written to connect C code
(from pointcache.c and particle_system.c) with C++ code (FLUID.cpp which in
turn calls the Mantaflow Python scripts)

* Inside the particle system code there is a function that currently reads
Elbeem particle data into an actual particle system. For Mantaflow
particles we need that as well and so I wrote a new wrapper for that.

* All in all, what you can do now is toggle "FLIP particles" in the cache
options and it will save particle data instead of mesh data. Displaying
them is still a TODO however.

* Earlier this week I did some housekeeping and merged master.

=== Next up ===

* Since I am now able to save and load Mantflow FLIP particle data, the
next step is to get all the particles actually show up in the viewport.
When I saw that the particle import/export worked, I internally hoped that
they somehow would just appear. Yeah, that was opportunistic. It couldn't
be that easy and so I'll look into displaying FLIP particles next week ;)

* Next Friday I have meeting with Nils. Hopefully FLIP particles will work
by then so that we can discuss secondary particles (tracer, drop float).

* Also, I think finishing all particles (FLIP and secondary particles) and
then moving on to fluid guiding makes more sense. So basically what I'll do
in my schedule is swap "secondary particles" and "fluid guiding".

=== Questions ===

* No

Best wishes,
Sebastián
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