Glu3D - liquid simulator

Glue3d is an external plugin from 3DALIENS. As you can see the name of the plugin is similar to "glue" and this is the right thinking, cause Glu3d is a liquid simulator. As opposed from famous products of NextLimit (realflow or realwave), Glu3d works totally in max and maya environment. Thanks to this solution we will save a lot of time and problems with exporting liquid to our favorite 3D software. On 3DALIENS web site there is an available demo version of Glu3D, which can be upgraded to full commercial plugin for $295.

Our adventure with this plugin starts from putting a particle emitter in the scene (create>geometry>glu3d pouring system). Automatically, we are able to use Glue3D toolbar, which provides us all most important function of plugin, like creating new emitters, starting simulations, display options etc.
One of the most important elements of Glue3D is object manager. Thanks to this tool we are able to fully administrate our scene, add new objects to collision and control all attributes of surface of objects, which are part of simulation. We can setup options like Bounce - which responds for liquid reflex for surfaces, Frictions - which gives us opportunity to control strength of friction, adherence - this parameter controls the particles adherence or glueness to the objects surface when collision occurs, and much more. Object manager is quite easy to learn but powerful tool.



Parameters witch are connected with liquid structures are available in the command panel. We just have to click on Glue3D icon, which is placed in the viewport. We can find there many sections. Dynamic parameters - we can find there parameters connected with particles, like LOD, which allow us to choose correct number of particles, thickness - makes particles keep together, gravity etc. Surface parameters allow users to control liquid surfaces that were created from particles. Surface LOD- allow users to control level of mesh, Drop size to - This is the radius of the particle when it is alone, with no other particle blending with it. Melting threshold controls how far particles blend together. If particles are far each other and this parameter value is high, then particles will blend. In this section we are able to repair "bad" frames of our animation and create WETmap - special "wet" texture, which are generated in place of collision. Of course we can control objects that should create wetmaps from the object manager. Using surface creation we are able to choose right emitter. And we can save our simulation in working folder - we can see simulation statistics here too.
By clicking on emitter we are able to change the radius of the emitter and speed of emission. Here we are also able to import particles from Particle Flow. All values can be easy animated, so it's not a problem to create liquids, which become dense or to simulate turning tap off. We are able to animate all parameters by using the curve editor. Authors didn't forget about spacewarps. We can add wind or animate our liquid through the path. Adding space warps is very easy - we just have to use bind to space warp function.

Glu3D plugin of 3DALIENS has got few little bugs, but I'm quite impressed with the speed of this liquid simulator. Authors make updates all the time, so new mistakes are removed very fast. All updates are available for demo version too. On the producers web site we man can find many tutorials and education materials. Plugin is quite easy to learn and user friendly. We can be master of liquids in very short time. I think this plugin is great solution for all animators, because of its quite low price, care authors of clients and frequent updates.



Glu3D main features are:

-Particle based dynamic engine that automatically animates liquids that interact with surrounding geometry
-Triangle mesh surface sequence is generated to visualize liquid surface
-Fully integrated in 3dsmax environment in order to simplify production workflow
-File cache system to store pre-calculated dynamics results
-Crowd object. A sample object is instanced at every particle position
-Motion blur
-Wet maps
-Texture mapping
-Arbitrary planar shapes as sources
-Fill objects function to speed up scene initial condition setup
-Friendly customizable UI full of shortcuts, menus and toolbar buttons
-Integration with Particle Flow

Best Regards,
Evermotion Team.