In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we take a beginner’s look at creating a basic fluid simulation. This tutorial details the basics of many of the settings involved with fluids and how to understand them.

Note: this tutorial uses the official Blender 2.5 Alpha 2 release.

Intro to Fluid Simulation>

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Discussion

53 Responses to “Introduction to Fluid Simulator”
  1. Maxinova
    Posts: 10

    Nice Tutorial! Where did you get that IOR file?

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    1
    Mar 29, 2010 at 9:03 pm
    • Paul Torres
      Posts: 17

      Just google it :) that’s how i got mine

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      1.1
      Sep 1, 2010 at 8:02 am
  2. RH2
    Posts: 11

    Thanks Matt Ebb!

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    2
    Mar 29, 2010 at 10:26 pm
  3. Martin Lindelöf
    Posts: 30

    The IOR file is in the bundle, I think it’s worth 4$ just to get that one ;D but Im going to try and get my paypal pw back and buy a monthly sub. for april and check it out.

    awesome work Jonathan as usual, the time thing has always gotten me confused. you explained it very well. although I agree with you. It should be FCurve controlled in the future, but I guess there’s a lot of “physical correct” calculations going on there.

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    3
    Mar 30, 2010 at 1:13 am
  4. Solineoz
    Posts: 95

    Nice introduction to the fluid simulator :)
    Thanks Jonathan !

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    4
    Mar 30, 2010 at 5:02 am
  5. MeshWeaver
    Posts: 37

    WOAH! this is awesome, Jonathan! i’ve always found fluid sims so confusing, but this video REALLY helps :D

    i am SO going to bookmark this page (and post a comment on Vimeo! :D )

    p.s. sorry about the capitals, there’s no italic…

    @RH2 – hi RH2 :D

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    5
    Mar 30, 2010 at 8:55 am
    • RH2
      Posts: 11

      Hey MeshWeaver!!!

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      5.1
      Mar 30, 2010 at 6:41 pm
  6. Joel
    Posts: 3

    I found the IOR by just searching for it on google. Search for “Material IOR” (without quotes, of course) and you’ll find it (I got it from a post at Blender Artists).

    Anyway, great tutorial, Jonathan! This tutorial was very nice and useful, since I’ve been wondering a bit about how to do nice fluid simulation. Thanks!

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    6
    Mar 30, 2010 at 10:26 am
  7. Jon
    Posts: 1

    Just an FYI, IOR does stand for index of refraction and not index of reflection :D I’ll be waiting for those more in depth videos, but there were a few little tidbits that this video made much clearer for me. Thanks!

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    7
    Mar 30, 2010 at 12:02 pm
  8. Posts: 53

    Just a little thing, the default FPS is 24 frames/second. And to sync the preview you can change the box (next to the red record button) to frame dropping….

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    8
    Mar 30, 2010 at 12:21 pm
  9. Benjamin Bailey
    Posts: 5

    Very helpful, thank you. Was experimenting with fluid sim recently.

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    9
    Mar 30, 2010 at 12:31 pm
  10. Tobey
    Posts: 98

    Nice tutorial and quite catchy results! Thank you.

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    10
    Mar 30, 2010 at 3:39 pm
  11. Marcus
    Posts: 20

    Does anybody know what will change with the coming Particle fluids? Will this be a separate thing or replace the fluid simulator?

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    11
    Mar 30, 2010 at 4:01 pm
  12. Alexander Lee
    Posts: 41

    Vimeo has been having a lot of problems recently. This video isn’t working right now, and Vimeo is down about half the time I go there. You guys should maybe consider switching to YouTube. You’d probably have enough views to become a “partner” (and be able to post videos longer than 10 minutes).

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    12
    Mar 30, 2010 at 4:21 pm
  13. Grisel Villavicencio
    Posts: 1

    I’ve just stumbled upon your site while searching for a tutorial on an related subject. Glad I did too. There’s a lot I like. Anyway, you’ve been bookmarked and I’ll be back soon. :)

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    13
    Apr 5, 2010 at 7:12 am
  14. Blender 2.5 Tutorials
    Posts: 2

    Great video, man. I’ll be linking to this for sure! I don’t know how it’s changed with version 2.5, but it was also helpful to save the bakes as different names in a directory to access later.

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    14
    Apr 6, 2010 at 4:56 am
  15. Ben Anderson
    Posts: 4

    Fantastic tutorial that I really enjoyed and I look forward to your next one.

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    15
    Apr 13, 2010 at 4:51 pm
  16. FrancoB411
    Posts: 1

    Great tutorial. Looking forward to advanced fluids!

    Best,

    F

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    16
    Apr 15, 2010 at 9:49 am
  17. Alex
    Posts: 1

    hey..got one problem at the start:
    when i click on domain, the cube turns into a thing that looks like that http://www.goldwischwasch.ch/07_Ich%20-%20Tanja/Hobbys/Mineralien/Rubin%20roh%20Wuerfel_10.jpg

    i’m using blender 2.5 alpha 2

    any idea how to fix that??

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    17
    Apr 21, 2010 at 1:57 pm
    • Posts: 1415

      My first thought would be to increase the resolution and to insure your simulation is running for more than a single frame.

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      17.1
      Apr 21, 2010 at 4:07 pm
      • Jonathan Shirlaw
        Posts: 2

        I think what he means is starting with the default scene, simply changing the default cube to Domain, straight away, without baking the fluid simulation, it seems to deform the cube as the fluid itself(even though, domain was selected, not fluid), I am getting the same thing, possibly the way it works in a newer build is different, or its a bug, no idea myself, but I cant seem to achieve the nice effect you have in this video

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        17.1.1
        Jun 13, 2010 at 8:41 am
      • Jonathan Shirlaw
        Posts: 2

        Actually, I just followed your steps exactly, and seemed to have the same thing happen…yet once it finished baking, now it seems to be working the same as in the video……really weird behavior anyway

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        17.1.2
        Jun 13, 2010 at 8:48 am
      • Bisslad
        Posts: 5

        Hi there, this is a really strange problem alright. Using 2.5 beta at the moment and haven’t altered any of the original settings but when you select the cube and and add it as a domain under the fluid type dropdown box, the cube immediately subdivides(?) and deforms into a fluid object.

        At this point, if you press alt-A, the “domain” falls and begins to spread over an invisible plane some distance below that is not delineated by any boundary or other domain. I will try and get a screencast on you tube and post a link.

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        17.1.3
        Jul 28, 2010 at 12:35 pm
      • Mike
        Posts: 17

        For people that have problem with the domain turning into fluid as soon as u click domain, clear the folder where the baked simulation is then check the normals of your fluid object, go to edit mode on the fluid object then press Ctrl-N. Then it should work. ALWAYS CHECK UR NORMALS :)

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        17.1.4
        Nov 30, 2010 at 2:16 am
      • Mike
        Posts: 17

        woops, forgot to say only if your fluid goes everywhere even after baking

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        17.1.5
        Nov 30, 2010 at 2:27 am
  18. beau
    Posts: 23

    hahaha lol i only have 2 gigs of ram and 1 year ago i put the resolution to 800 XD

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    18
    Jun 7, 2010 at 10:38 am
  19. Person
    Posts: 2

    @Bisslad, That’s the SAME thing that happens to me in the beta! I haven’t altered any of the settings, and when you select the cube and add it as a domain under the fluid type box, it immediately subdivides! And deforms into a fluid object. I also have the problem that when I set the fluid box inside of the actual domain and set it to ” fluid and the box on the outside “Domain,” the fluid doesn’t move, but once I got it TO actually move and it fell straight through the domain box. That’s kind of weird…

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    19
    Aug 5, 2010 at 2:46 pm
  20. Person
    Posts: 2

    It’s like the domain makes itself into the fluid instead of the box inside of it, but in the previous ALPHA version, the domain was the outside box that kept the inside particles from escaping through the bottom of it.

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    20
    Aug 5, 2010 at 2:52 pm
  21. Prometheus
    Posts: 5

    Nice tutorial, helped a lot! However, you said there’d be follow-up tutorials, or did I get that wrong? I don’t want to push you, I just wondered if you had forgotten about that. There aren’t a lot of fluid sim tuts out there, and most of them are crap…

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    21
    Aug 12, 2010 at 5:14 am
  22. Andrea the Fashion Girl
    Posts: 1

    Terrific, that’s precisely what I was scanning for! You just saved me alot of searching around

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    22
    Aug 18, 2010 at 1:32 pm
  23. blender user
    Posts: 24

    whens the next tutorial coming? that was great!

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    23
    Aug 20, 2010 at 6:47 pm
  24. Vinicius Niu
    Posts: 6
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    24
    Sep 21, 2010 at 7:02 pm
    • Posts: 1415

      Those look really good Vinicius! Was this in 2.49 or 2.5?

      -Jonathan

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      24.1
      Sep 21, 2010 at 9:29 pm
  25. Anthony
    Posts: 5

    I love this tutorial, and I love the Material IOR sheet you have, Helps so much (Found it on BlenderArtists).
    Anyways, I still have one problem, How do I render the fluid animation to make a video? I’am very new to blender and I cannot figure this out, normal Render just takes a picture of the fluid wherever I paused the animation.

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    25
    Sep 30, 2010 at 12:14 pm
    • Anthony
      Posts: 5

      Alright, I think I figured it out. Render Animation (it just takes a really long time). How do i save it as a video though?

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      25.1
      Sep 30, 2010 at 12:27 pm
  26. Anton
    Posts: 2

    Watched this last night and tried it out today. Works really well and is super fun to use! I’m interested in the other options as well, other than domain and fluid. Will there be a second tutorial on this? Maybe you could show the different settings with different resolution and bake a really high res one as well. But please pause the screen cap while baking :)

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    26
    Oct 14, 2010 at 10:08 am
  27. Matthew
    Posts: 12

    Hi Jonathan, I’m having a problem with the simulator, i set up the scene like in the Tut but the fluid itself seems to fly on the -Y axis and then it shrinks and goes downward. Any answers would be welcome. I’m using build 2.54.0 r31878

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    27
    Nov 4, 2010 at 10:29 am
    • Posts: 1415

      Hi Matthew, it sounds like you need to apple the rotation to your object. Select your domain and press CTRL + A > Apply Rotation. You should apply it to the fluid object as well for safe measures.

      -Jonathan

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      27.1
      Nov 5, 2010 at 2:05 am
  28. Matthew
    Posts: 12

    Thanks Jonathan it got rid of that problem, but now the fluid is dropping correctly then it rotates again and Suzanne shaped fluid drops (i was using her in a fluid test) and then both of the problems repeat…Dumb cache

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    28
    Nov 7, 2010 at 3:38 pm
  29. Matthew
    Posts: 12

    Sorry if i seem kind of slow, it might be because I’m 14, Thanks again.

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    29
    Nov 11, 2010 at 12:21 pm
  30. Posts: 12

    Excellent tutorial, worked perfectly and I’m a complete noob to Blender, just started this month. I have a suggestion for a tutorial (if it can be done) dealing with fluid direction say pouring fluid from a bottle/faucet into a cup or perhaps pouring fluid over an object like a ball/car/person. I tried adding a ball into my scene and the fluid just ignored it, I’m sure there has to be a way for the fluid/ball to interact. Though I used a nurbs sphere which was probably the issue.
    Thank you for that tutorial I’ll def. be watching this site.

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    30
    Nov 12, 2010 at 2:46 pm
    • Posts: 1415

      For the ball to interact with the fluid you need to set it as a Fluid Obstacle.

      -Jonathan

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      30.1
      Nov 14, 2010 at 8:47 am
  31. Timothy Hargis
    Posts: 2

    I am using blender 2.56a-beta on a MAC with OSX 10.6.6. I am new and have been messing around an i messed up some where. I start the water box within a box tutorial and the app crashed. no problem there, just restarted, and restarted tutorial. started with new, went to make the cube a Domain. when i did that the cube disappeared and a water type sphere appeared. I was thinking why did it do this. then i created another cube, made it smaller and put a fluid on it. i baked to see what what happened and the animation worked, put the sphere was there.

    I think i know how to fix the issue. how delete my /tmp/ files. i tried to highlight them but could not an option to delete them. they are saved somewhere and keep coming up when i start a new project.

    Also i could not find the blender 2.5 beta a2 version to download. witch version is the most stable.

    thank you!!!!!

    please send solution to my email posted above or mjtimothyscott@gmail.com

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    31
    Feb 22, 2011 at 3:21 am
  32. Timothy Hargis
    Posts: 2

    figured it out. on the MAC you have to REBOOT to clear the tmp folder

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    32
    Feb 22, 2011 at 10:21 pm
  33. Neil Kolban
    Posts: 2

    Loved the tutorial. Was the second (more advanced) tutorial every made?

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    33
    Mar 23, 2011 at 11:24 pm
  34. Posts: 1

    Hey Jonathan!

    Thanks for the awesome tuts! Very easy to follow…you’re
    a natural teacher.

    =)

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    34
    Oct 10, 2011 at 7:37 pm
  35. Posts: 20

    hmm…a little different in 2.60 eh? :)

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    35
    Oct 23, 2011 at 8:56 pm
  36. John
    Posts: 1

    Hi, Thanks for the tutorial.

    I have one problem, following the steps in the video I can not scale, i.e. change the size, of the tracer particles.Can anyone explain how this can be achieved?

    Using the s-Key to scale the icosphere does not change the size of the tracers….

    I’m using 2.61 v. 1762 on Windows.

    Happy New Year…

    John

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    36
    Dec 29, 2011 at 7:36 am
  37. ToxicGoat
    Posts: 1

    hi Jonothan . Great tut . I have hidden the fluid object but when i render the fluid object is render also ?? Any suggestions ?

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    37
    Feb 4, 2012 at 1:44 am
    • Carl
      Posts: 2

      Same problem here…

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      37.1
      Feb 7, 2012 at 5:24 am
    • Carl
      Posts: 2

      Just worked it out. On the section (top right), as well as clicking on the eye to make it hidden, you also have to click on the camera to remove it from the render

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      37.2
      Feb 7, 2012 at 5:27 am
  38. Posts: 1

    Awesome introduction.. thank you very much!

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    38
    Feb 4, 2012 at 9:53 pm

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