[Soc-2017-dev] Weekly Report #02 - Mantaflow Particles and Fluid Guiding

[Sebastián Barschkis]

Hello everyone,

there are now some cool features in the Mantaflow branch! Here is my
summary of this week:

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sebbas/GSoC_2017/Reports/Week_2

= Week 2 =

This week was a great success. Besides smaller UI improvements I managed to
get FLIP particles into the viewport.

=== What's been done ===

* As one of the goals of this GSoC is also to get closer to the master
branch integration, I took care of a UI shortcoming. Previously there was
only the option to set domain borders according to a few textual
descriptions (e.g. all open, just vertically open). This is a bit limiting
and so I implemented a "check box" layout.

* Cleanup in the cache. The introduction of multiple domain support broke
some of the file loading. I fixed this and now caching should continue even
if the playback was reset in between. Files names also look a bit nicer now.

* Console output cleanup (it had gotten to a point where the output was
slowing down the simulation ...).

* The particle API that I worked on last week turned out to be a good
foundation. The file IO worked correctly, I only needed to adjust particle
positions (scale and translate them to match Blender world coordinates).
After some fine-tuning (removing dead Mantaflow particles), I finally got
them to show up in the viewport. So now, for your liquid simulations you
can choose between caching FLIP particles or meshes!

=== Next up ===

* I would like to improve the FLIP particle option a bit:
** Add an option to have mesh and FLIP particles both at the same time.
** Add an option to control the Narrow-Band width. This way you will be
able to control the amount of particles. It's especially useful for scenes
where you not only want a surface with particles but the entire volume
filled up.
** Take care of particle caching with liquid high-res option enabled.
** Import particle velocities. Mantaflow stores them in a separate array
which I need to save and load (.uni files) similarly to the actual particle
system.

* I discussed with Nils how to approach the secondary particles (tracer,
drop, float). As a first step, I will experiment with an additional
particle system in Mantaflow. This system will act as a "droplet"
generator: Whenever a cell exceeds a predetermined threshold velocity, a
new particle should be created and initialized there (i.e. set location and
copy velocity from underlying velocity grid).

* Once particle generation works, I can apply velocities and external
forces on them (advection step, add gravity). All in all, this setup should
create first Mantaflow secondary particle effects.

* Since this is setup is experimental, I'll first build a working prototype
in Mantaflow. I can later transfer it to Blender.

=== Questions ===

* No

Best wishes,
Sebastián
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