I was looking at the demo for Real Flow, and was very impressed. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to get it to work with Poser - it seems to export a single mesh for each frame, meaning if I wanted to render a scene using RealFlow inside of Poser, that I would need to import an obscene amount of mesh objects. Am I missing something, or is there no convenient way to use RealFlow simulations from inside of Poser?

It is possible to use Python to alter the geometry of an object on a frame by frame basis.
(I've been experimenting with Blender's fluid simulation). The sample Callback scripts that come with Poser should serve as examples of what's needed.

Message edited on: 02/20/2006 16:48

Yeah....I'm no good at programming. I've got enough troubles just trying to learn 3D :)

What format are the files ?
How are they named ?

I can probably adapt the script I've got to match.

Contact becco_UK on trhe Cinema 4D forum. He uses Poser and Realflow. Yet, I guess that you need another 3D app. becco has some water shapes in his store. You may want to check those.

MetaForm at DAZ does much the same as RealFlow. You cannot practically use Python for geometry creation since there are some serious bugs in creating new geometries as well as some very large memory leaks in that part of the interface. Bill

MetaForm isn't a fluid simulator.
I haven't run into a memory leak yet, but I'll keep an eye open for it.

What are the bugs you mentioned ?
Are they still present in P6 SR2 ?

I have metaform as well, I just wanted to try out Real Flow. Metaform actually does simulate fluid, just not as realistically. It's a very good program for it's price.

A few frames from a test animation.

Re post #4, the best format would be OBJ, with the files for each frame having the frame number appended to a common prefix.

I've never checked with P6, the last bit of deep investigation was actually P5, but I'm interested myself in finding out whther the problem still exists so I'll try a test harness this weekend. The bugs were crashes due to unitialised data in Actor.SetGeometry(). It was fixable at low level but a reasonable workaround was to load the geometry externally using pose files. From what I could remember the memory leaks were still a problem. Bill

Probably has been fixed, as I'm using SetGeometry.

nruddock: So you've programmed a python script that is set to import the .obj files that real flow would export, and for each frame the next object is used? Or am I not understanding something correctly? Will you release this python script once it's finished?

"So you've programmed a python script that is set to import the .obj files that real flow would export, and for each frame the next object is used?"
The script currently imports the BOBJ format produced by the Blender fluid simulator.
It could be adapted to read plain OBJ files.

This was really just a test script, so I'll need to add a simple GUI and the OBJ reading as time permits.

Attached Link: http://www.nextlimit.com/

nruddock: That script you have programmed looks very good and now I'm wondering if it could be adapted to imort the mesh binary data that RealFlow3 also outputs rather than the .obj files. Also, I have posted the link to RealFlow here - in case casual observers are wondering what RealFlow is. MetaForm looks good for the price range it is in, but is not really comparible to RealFlow3 which, in addition to its particle system, also has a very good dynamics engine. I made this figure from RealFlow3 but it would be nice to have some animated data working in Poser from time to time too.

Also, I understand Next Limit Technologies offer a free licence of RealFlow to anyone that writes a certified connection plugin for other software. That free licence is worth more than $1000 dollars!

"I'm wondering if it could be adapted to import the mesh binary data that RealFlow3 also outputs rather than the .obj files."

Almost certainly could be.
I'd need either file specs., or samples.

nruddock: Have just sent you a p.m. that includes a link to the simple RealFlow3 sequence shown here. Have also included in the zip file some Next Limit pdf's concering the file structure of their binary data.

Test data downloaded.
I'll take a look and see what I can do.

Well no problem importing the geometry, as the format's pretty much the same as the Blender output. Scale and position were a bit awkward, but they only need to be sorted for the first frame.

Need to work on a GUI and modularise the various import flavours.

nruddock: I'm very impressed to see what you have done in such a short amount of time. I assume from what you wrote, the first .obj of the sequence is imported and scaled/positioned, with the remaining automatically frames aligning to this? It is possible to place the sequence anywhere in the scene as long as the first frame is set? The scaling shouldn't be much of a problem to sort out in RealFlow3 - in there the scale value can be adjusted. Very well done - for a long time, some said it couldn't be done!

It's just the vertices and faces loading, the RealFlow meshes have texture coordinates which I need to work in (the Blender meshes don't have them).

The scale position was done manually ('cause I has to find the out where the mesh was), so it doesn't have to be centred.
Once the set for the first frame they just remain at those values as they would for any other Poser object.
Probably can manage to get reasonable initial values by analysing the mesh in the first frame (GUI will have a user override) .

nruddock: RealFlows texture coordinates are used with its texture gizmo so that its possible, for instance, to apply a map to a sphere, melt the sphere and the texture runs with the melt - thats the theory antway but haven't used that feature myself. I noticed later that my sequence was not created central at ground level - was that the reason you had to find the mesh? Sorry about that, I always forget RealFlow with the Cinema plugin always gives objects a zero axis even though the mesh may not be in that position.