Fluvio - Multiphysics and Fluid Dynamics

[Thinksquirrel]

Hi,

Can you detect wen fluid s colliding with a non fluid body, or with perhaps another fluid type (mix fluids)...I.e Where's My Water type game?

Yes, you can.

For any collider:
http://support.thinksquirrel.com/doc...collision.html

For other fluids:
http://support.thinksquirrel.com/doc...le_plugin.html

[Thinksquirrel]

An update on Fluvio 2 development:

The code rewrite is about 90% completed - performance has taken a massive leap due to some fundamental changes under the hood (2x-4x in initial testing, single-threaded). Once the rewrite is finished, I will be implementing a marching cubes plugin (a highly requested feature) for actual fluid mesh geometry.

Fluvio 2's API is not directly compatible with Fluvio 1.x - however, there are equivalent properties for just about every method.

I will also write an exporter in order to export Fluvio 1.x fluids to the new fluid file format.

No release window just yet (it's done when it's done), but expect one fairly soon.

[GS Kiwibird]

Thank you. This is just what I need for my game. Looking forward to Fluvio 2!

[Thinksquirrel]

I decided to not go with marching cubes in the end due to the extremely high performance cost (I may include the algorithm for offline rendering, though). I've upgraded the old renderer to a surface shader with a new lighting model, compatibility for both forward and deferred rendering, and support for normal maps. I've also wrapped it up nicely in one easy-to-use component that is placed on the camera. I've also included support for using Shuriken to render billboards (or even meshes!) with the fluid shader or any other shader.

Here's a video of the new renderer. You'll want to watch this in 1080p - there are some artifacts in the video from the screen capture.

EDIT: This video is outdated, check the first post



The fluid in this video is constrained to 2D with 300 particles, and lit by two pixel lights + one directional light. I'll upload some more videos with different configurations.

[Thinksquirrel]

I've just sent out Fluvio 2.0 beta 1, with the new Water Wheel example scene.

Changelog:

• All of the code has been rewritten, and the object model has been simplified. Performance tests have shown Fluvio 2 to run anywhere between 2x-4x faster, use less memory, and create less garbage.
• FluidParticlePlugins have been removed (Prefabs can still be spawned along with particles, though). All ParticlePlugin functionality can be handled with OnFluidCollision____ events.
• FluidBillboards have been replaced. Billboards are now rendered either using Shuriken (Unity 3.5+), or the Legacy Particle Emitter.
• Fluid audio components offer much better performance.
• An AdvancedFluidSettings component has been added, exposing some performance-related API functions.
• Multithreading can be toggled at runtime.
• All shaders have been rewritten into surface shaders for more unified support across platforms. Shader-related effects have all been combined into a single FluidEffect script, which should be applied on a camera.
• Shaders now support lighting, normal maps and specular highlights. Fallbacks are available for both Forward and Deferred rendering modes.

Preliminary beta docs are available here.

If you would like to be on the beta list and own a copy of Fluvio, send me your email and invoice number through PM and I can send you a copy of the beta.

For everyone else, I should have another video of the water wheel scene uploaded shortly.

Also, I'd like to take some time out to announce the new license model with Fluvio 2. There will be three versions available - Fluvio, Fluvio Professional, and Fluvio Enterprise.

• Fluvio 2 Professional (the current license) is a free upgrade to all current owners of Fluvio 1 and will include all source code. Professional's price will go up with the release of Fluvio 2.
• Fluvio 2 ("Indie") will be available as a .NET assembly. Both packages will have the exact same features, and the indie license does not have any additional limitations. Indie's price has not been decided.
• Fluvio Enterprise is available directly from Thinksquirrel Software and includes access to the project repository (Unity Asset Server, this can be mirrored onto SVN or Git) and direct product support. The availability and price of this option depends on the demand. Let me know if anyone would be interested in this.

[Gooms9]

Hey awesome looking plugin. Just curious, do you have any videos of some 3D fluid dynamics with shadows and specular highlights?

Also, am I correct in assuming that mesh based fluids are no longer on the table for fluvio 2.0?

Thanks!

[Thinksquirrel]

Hey awesome looking plugin. Just curious, do you have any videos of some 3D fluid dynamics with shadows and specular highlights?

Not currently - shadows aren't yet supported - still working on the shaders and it's a pretty interesting problem to tackle using billboarding.

Also, am I correct in assuming that mesh based fluids are no longer on the table for fluvio 2.0?
Thanks!

Marching cubes are off the table (for 2.0) unless I can speed them up a lot. I'm still looking at ways to speed up the algorithm, as well as other forms of surface reconstruction. I've explored a variety of research topics, but any suggestions in this area would be great.

I want to get it working correctly, and 2.0 brings many performance improvements and bugfixes that I'd like to release soon.

[Thinksquirrel]

A preview of the new Paint example scene:

EDIT: This media is outdated, check the first post



Also, I'm happy to say that shadows, specular highlights, and cubemaps are now supported. Here are photos of the paint with a cubemap reflection (The first has no normal map on the decal):



Testers: Beta 2 should be out sometime this week.

For those who are interested, here's a list of the shaders shipping with Fluvio 2:

Fluid Shader (High Quality) - Shader Model 3.0 : Desktops/Web Player

• Specular Highlights
• Cubemaps
• Depth Texture
• Normal Maps
• Realtime shadows (Desktop/Web Player)

Fluid Shader (Medium Quality) - Shader Model 2.0 : Desktops/Web Player

• Specular Highlights
• Depth Texture
• Normal Maps
• Realtime shadows

Fluid Shader (Low Quality) - Shader Model 2.0/GLES 2.0 : Desktops/Web Player/iPad 2/iPhone 4s and equivalent Android platforms

• Specular Highlights
• Depth Texture
• Realtime shadows (Desktop/Web Player)

Fluid Shader (Mobile) - Shader Model 2.0/GLES 2.0 : Lower spec desktops/Web Player/iPhone 3GS+ and equivalent Android platforms

• No depth texture (intended for 2D)

All shaders fallback appropriately, and the mobile shader falls back to Alpha Blended particles.

[Thinksquirrel]

Beta 2 has been sent out to testers.

Here's a demo scene (finally):
http://sqr.li/Zo8

[mrbdrm]

Hi
nice going there
awsome progress , did you send the beta to ver 1 users ?
Thank you and im really liking this .

[Thinksquirrel]

Hi
nice going there
awsome progress , did you send the beta to ver 1 users ?
Thank you and im really liking this .

Thank you! I've also sent you a link to the beta through PM =)

[hippocoder]

Your web demo still renders fluids flipped Y for me but the new splatter demo works fine, if unresponsive (framerate seems ok, just mouse is virtually unresponsive)

[Thinksquirrel]

Your web demo still renders fluids flipped Y for me but the new splatter demo works fine, if unresponsive (framerate seems ok, just mouse is virtually unresponsive)

Hippo, can you try lowering the quality settings and let me know if it flips back?

EDIT: Actually, I think I've squashed this. Go ahead and reload the scene and let me know if it's working correctly now.

[Thinksquirrel]

Adding three features to the list...

1) Fluid profiles. Now you can change the settings for a fluid based on the runtime platform. The mobile example scene uses this feature in order to decrease particle count for iPhone 3GS/4, and downsample the shaders on iPhone 4/iPad 1. You can configure profiles by runtime platform + iPhone generation or dpi - I may include other conditions as well.

2) Fluid grabbing/pushing example script. Taken straight from Fluid Box, I've included the script that allows you to manipulate fluids with the mouse/multi-touch. You can try it out in the web player here.

3) A focus on fluid camera script. This script uses the new centroid and bounds API - It finds the fluid particle that most represents the center of all of the particles, focuses the camera on that, and changes the distance or orthographic size to encompass the entire fluid. It includes min and max distances/sizes, as well as easing variables. Pretty cool stuff.

I'm working on documentation and some final testing before initial release. I have plans to revamp the softbody and animation system, but there are so many fixes and improvements in 2.0 that I would like to get out of the door. I also would like to take the time to make sure those two features are implemented in a much better way.

I've done some performance optimization for mobile and I'm fairly happy with the results. The mobile demo will have
~75 nicely sized 2d particles by default, decreasing particle count for lower generation devices (I'm still tweaking the solver to see if I can get some more out of it, so those numbers aren't quite finalized).

Also, I'm looking for some Android testers! Whether you are in the beta list or not (I can even get you a trial copy of Fluvio if you don't own a license), I would like some people to beta test Fluvio on as many Android devices as possible. The only thing that I ask is that you have Android Pro (for the image effect). If interested, send me a PM with your email/Android device(s) and I can get you a pre-release verison.

[Thinksquirrel]

Release Candidate 1 is out! And this one is an open beta. If you're interested in testing Fluvio 2 (whether you own Fluvio 1 or not), send me a PM with your email and I can get you an evaluation version. Please note that this version contains a watermark and cannot be used for commercial purposes.

2.0 should be out sometime this week, if all goes well (depending on the speed of the review process).

[Thinksquirrel]

And even more good news.... 2.0.0 has been submitted to the Asset Store! It should be released soon. Here are final details:

• Fluvio 2 Professional - $150 - This is a free upgrade to all current Fluvio 1 customers, with full source code.
  
• Fluvio 2 Standard - $50 - This is a new package aimed at smaller-scale developers and people who don't need to tweak the source code at all. It offers the exact same functionality as Fluvio Professional.
  
• Fluvio 2 Enterprise - contact me - This is a full site license for larger-scale developers.

I'll be sending out evaluations over the next few days to beta testers (also people who applied and were unable to try out rc1). A more accessible evaluation version (A free, non-commercial use Fluvio) will be coming soon.

These prices are subject (but unlikely) to change.

Some important notes:

• I've cut softbodies and animation for this initial release - I'm hard at work at getting these to work just right, and was not satisfied with the old system. They're coming back very soon. Vertex softbodies, however, probably won't make it back in.
• I'm working on an exporter tool for Fluvio 1.x to export to .fld files. If you have a lot of different fluids, you may want to hold off on upgrading until that releases.

[Gooms9]

Hey, I'm wondering if you've looked into this method of rendering metaballs? http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...ems3_ch07.html

It looks pretty neat (from what I understand of it)

[Thinksquirrel]

Hey, I'm wondering if you've looked into this method of rendering metaballs? http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...ems3_ch07.html

It looks pretty neat (from what I understand of it)

I have looked at this article pretty extensively - there are a few issues with this method.

1) The method requires keeping a separate set of visualization particles and doing nearest-neighbor and kernel function calculations on the GPU. This is fine, but limits compatibility with older/less powerful GPUs. I also doubt that this would fit into Unity's surface shader architecture at all.

2) Downsampling the effect could be trickier to implement, compared to the current implementation.

3) A quote from the conclusion: "The biggest problem, however, lies in dealing with small parts of fluid that are located far apart. Because the repulsion algorithm requires a clip space encapsulating every particle, the limited resolution of the viewport will likely cause multiple particles to map to the same pixel, implying data loss."

I've been keeping it on my radar, though, for possible future implementation.

[Thinksquirrel]

Just a heads up - Unity is having a large volume of 3.5 assets so Fluvio 2 may take a little bit for release. It seems the package metadata was updated but not the package itself, so sit tight folks, it's coming =)

[Thinksquirrel]

Fluvio 2 has been released! I've updated the first page.

Also, a bugfix release + some helper functions for a faster workflow will be coming in the next few days.