Overview

Solvers are the heart of any Particle Simulation. They determine how the actual particles are simulated over the course of the animation. Certain solvers are more computationally intensive than others but they might be more adept at simulating more physicaly-based phenomena.

Standard Particles Solver

This is the standard Particles Solver. It is relatively cheap to simulate but is not the most physically accurate for high-end fluid dynamics type motions. Still, this should be your go-to solver for most situations unless you need something that actually simulates the fluid equations of motion.

Attributes

• ParticlesMaxNum - Maximum allowable particles in simulation

• ParticlesMaxTrailNum - Maximum allowable trail segments per particle if particle trails are enabled

• TimeStep - The time step of the Particle Simulation. The higher the timestep the faster the sim runs but timesteps that are too large will result in unstable sims.

• Source - All the sources the solver is aware of

• Sensors - All the sensors the solver should send simulation information to

• ColorScale[R/G/B/A] - Scales the incoming colors of the particles by a factor amount

• SizeScale[X/Y] - Scales the incoming sizes of the particles by a factor amount

• AlphaFadeWithLifetime - Whether the particles will fade away as their lifetime decreases

• HasTrail - Is particle trails enabled

• TrailFadeVal - How much the trails segments fade over the segment length

Grid Particles Solver

A grid solver tries to simulate the fluid dynamics equation on a uniform grid. This solver is optimized for multicore CPUs and is generally more expensive to compute compared to the standard solver. A grid solver is useful if you want to simulate realistc effects like smoke or fire.

Attributes

The Grid Solver shares the same attributes with the Standard Particles Solver as well as these additional attributes:

• BuoyancyDensity - The higher the density, the more easily the simulated fluid particles sink

• BuoyancyTemperature - Determines the temperature in which the fluid particles stay buoyant

• GridRes[X/Y] - The resolution/detail of the fluid simulation. The higher the GridRes, the more detailed the simulation is in that dimension. Take note that the higher the resolution, the more expensive it is to simulate. A number of 25 - 60 is recommended for reasonable computational time.

• GridSizeX - The actual physical size of the fluid grid. Make sure this size is large enough to cover the extents of your simulation. Typically, make this at least 2x the size of your character environment.

• Position[X/Y] - The source position of the fluid grid. Make sure this is placed a resonable position that is relatively close to the location of your character.