Northlogic Workshop: Driving PFlow Particles Through FumeFX-Simulations

Production Quality Fluid-Simulations

Part 1.
Driving PFlow Particles Through FumeFX-Simulations

Driving PFlow particles through the FumeFX-simulation is a great way to achieve production quality fluids.

Navigate to the "Create"-tab, and from a dropdown menu choose "Particle Systems" and from there choose "PF Source". Drag it to the viewport.

When the PFlow-emitter is created, open the flow-chart schematic-window by clicking "Particle View". Delete the Event which is default in the "Particle View" -window. There are two key-operators to use with FumeFX. The "FumeFX Birth" which generates particles where the FumeFX-simulation begins, and "FumeFX Follow", which drives the particles through the paths of the FumeFX-simulation. Drag a "FumeFX Birth" operator to the flow-chart area. Then click on the "FumeFX Birth" operator, and from there choose the grid you want the particles be driven through, set the "Emit Start" -and " Emit Stop" ranges to correspond to your FumeFX-simulation, and the "Rate" denotes the amount of particles being created.

Then choose a "FumeFX Follow" operator, and drag it under the "FumeFX Birth" operator. Choose the "FumeFX Follow" operator, and choose the FumeFX grid, for the particles to follow the FumeFX simulation.

After this, be sure to choose the "PF Source" -window, and from the sidebar which opens locate the "Particle Amount" "Upper Limit" from the "System Management" -tab and raise the number, if the number is too low, the particles may not represent the whole simulation because this limit is reached.

Also, there is a limit to the "Rate", after when it's high enough, the particles will not represent the whole simulation, and it can't be fixed by raising the upper limit, so it's better to have a lower number in the "Rate", and if you want more particles, you can copy the Events to create more particles.

Note: At this moment, PFlow is single-threaded, and because it is history-dependent, any changes you do to the simulation requires PFlow to calculate all subsequent frames, so it might be better to disable the Particle Emission from the PF Source viewport icon, or to choose frame 0 where no particles are yet emitted.