MiikaHweb Blog -> Blender (Page 4)

It's been more than a month since I released the first part of my Dynamic Paint guide. Now the second part is finally here.

It took way too long and I'm still not quite happy with some parts of it. But I have been completely missing my motivation to touch it. This guide has been like 90% done for up to two weeks. x_X

This second and final part of the guide explains all paint object related settings and also includes some downloadable .blend files.

Here is a render from one of the samples: Wetmap textures for fluid simulations.

I just updated my builds and the patch to version 1.13.

This new version fixes compatibility with recent SVN revisions (build errors and/or crashing) and fixes a crash when duplicating a "paint" object. I also did some code tweaking and added error messages if running out of memory. (Quite unlikely since dp barely requires memory but still... :p)

For download links check my Blender Builds page.

I know it was just yesterday when I released Dynamic Paint v1.10. However, yesterday Thomas Dinges (the Blender 2.5 UI coder) did some cleanup on Dynamic Paint user interface, so I decided to release it right away.


Changes in v1.12:
- UI cleanup by Thomas Dinges (DingTo).
- Fixes a bug with paint colors.
- Some code cleaning and tweaking.


You can download Windows builds or a code patch from my Blender Builds page.

I just uploaded Dynamic Paint v1.10 patch and builds. It fixes some bugs and improves some parts I found incomplete while writing the guide.

Changes after v.1.08:
- Textured painting is now anti-aliased, if AA is enabled.
- Fixes output issues that occured if canvas had more than 32.767 vertices.
- Fixes textured painting with smoke. Apparently it hasn't worked for months.
- Some minor tweaking.

You can download Windows builds or a patch from my Blender Builds page.

I also made a small patch for smoke simulator. It fixes viewing start and end of cached smoke when frame is outside the cache range. Basically this simplifies Dynamic Paint baking and smoke rendering if smoke simulation starts after frame 1. It was commited in SVN rev 33016.


Here's a simple scene testing all kinds of textured painting: (I made this for the DP guide.)

It's been a long time without updates, sorry about that. I had an exam period at university and had to focus on studying. But now I'm back. :p


This weekend I decided to update Dynamic Paint baking system. Currently it freezes the whole user interface same way as particles and smoke baking. In the recent SVN it's not even possible to show the process at mouse cursor anymore... Fluids, however, use this new "Jobs system" that processes bake in the background. It seemed quite easy to apply same system to DP.

Unfortunately it turned out to be impossible. Current jobs system crashes if you change animation frames within the bake process and it appears to be quite tricky one to fix. Most likely won't be fixed anytime soon. So I had to revert Dynamic Paint back to the old baking system. :(


Anyway, I have updated Dynamic Paint patch so it's yet again compatible with recent SVN revisions. Now I'm going to finish the second part of my Dynamic Paint guide. I guess I'll be able to release it by the end of this week.

First part of my Dynamic Paint guide is now out. It covers all Dynamic Paint Canvas settings. Rest of the guide (Paint settings) will be released within a week. I'll also make improvements to the existing parts and add some downloadable .blend file samples later.

Check it out here : Blender: Dynamic Paint Guide.

And feel free to inform me if you find some parts confusing or need more info. Otherwise I might not be able to improve the guide. :)


I also posted yet another Dynamic Paint update: v.1.05 fixes some issues with displacement maps and slightly improves effects system.



EDIT 2010-10-18: I've been busy with other things lately and can't focus on writing the second part of this guide. It will be delayed for a week or so. :p

Dynamic Paint patch is now updated to version v1.06. It fixes compatibility with recent SVN version plus some Mac OSX related issues, thanks Jens Verwiebe for reporting those!

EDIT 2010-10-22: Dynamic Paint v1.07 released. It restores compatibility with latest SVN and fixes some issues with textured and face-aligned proximity painting.

Blender Foundation's latest "open movie" Sintel (project Durian) was released a moment ago. You can download it free-of-charge from Sintel web site or watch it on video streaming service YouTube.com.

This 12-minute short is the third movie from Blender Foundation. It is done using Blender 3D creation suite and other open source applications. One of the main goals of Open Movie projects is to improve Blender as 3D-creation tool. Therefore one can think Sintel as a tech demo of Blender's capabilities.

Finnish Sintel fans who are waiting for subtitles: You can use ones I translated: sintel_finnish.srt.


Here's the YouTube release:

Yesterday jahka committed an update that fixes most particle collision stability issues. Previously SPH fluids were quite much unusable due to stability issues. Fluid kept "exploding" randomly no matter the settings. Now, after the fix, it seems very stable.

Here is a test of a pool being filled with particle fluid. No way you could have done this a week ago, but now I see no stability issues at all!


Too bad Farsthary hasn't finished his fluid surface generator. Now one can only render fluids as particles or as a volumetric texture. So no reflections or transparency is possible. :(


In case someone is wondering why I'm not writing the Dynamic Paint guide instead. Well, I gotta have some fun too. Particle fluids is something I've been waiting for a long time, and now as it finally works, I'm gonna play with it for a while. :p

I got inspired by my previous paint video, so I decided to try Dynamic Paint with a bit heavier scene.

Result, Realistic Rain:


It features total 500.000 rain particles. Cool thing is that the ground visual is all material+texturing, generated with Dynamic Paint. Every single wet spot and splash is real interaction with those 500.000 particles!

Making of is quite simple: paint texture affects ground darkness and specular, plus a fast drying wetmap is used as bump texture and to add those white splashes.

This scene also helped Blender become more stable. I found a quite nasty particle system bug while trying to render this. After reporting it to jahka it got fixed. :)

I have some good news. My "Dynamic Paint" tool is ready for another patch release!

You can download a build from MiikaHweb Blender Builds section or from GraphicAll.org.

If you want to make your own build, download the patch here. It's quite massive for a patch. Up to +4000 lines of code. o_O

It's still missing some small features / settings and some parts may not work yet. Yet it's stable enough to be released as beta. Please notify me if you experience any bugs or crashes so I can fix them.

Soon I'll start writing a guide that covers whole "Dynamic Paint" system. I guess most of the bugs gets fixed while doing that.


I also posted a new video of a fluid-like paint test:

I was just testing some stuff before uploading the patch but the result turned out something quite cool. In that render wetmap is used as normal/bump texture. Looks like some sort of 2D-fluid simulation. xD

And thanks again for everyone who donated to support this development! :)