Cell Fluids 1.6 for Blender is out
Originally posted on 8 January 2024 for Cell Fluids 1.5 and updated for Cell Fluids 1.6.
CG artist and programmer Shahzod Boyhonov (specoolar) has updated Cell Fluids, his promising lightweight fluid solver based on Blender’s Geometry Nodes system.
Cell Fluids 1.5 removes two of the limitations from the initial release, introducing initial support for animating the ground beneath the fluid being simulated, and for generating splashes.
To that, Cell Fluids 1.6 makes it possible to export baked simulations to game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine as static meshes with baked flow maps.
A promising lightweight ‘semi-realtime’ Blender fluid simulator
First released last year, Cell Fluids is a Geometry Nodes-based fluid solver.
It’s compatible with both Blender’s Cycles and Eevee renderers, and is described as being fast enough to work interactively, with the simulation being calculated in “semi-realtime”.
On its 1.0 release, it was already capable of good-looking results when mimicking rivers and oceans, but as a grid-based rather than particle-based solver – it generates a water plane with displacement rather than a full 3D fluid – came with some technical limitations.
Now supports splashes and ground animation
The Cell Fluids 1.5 release removes at least two of those limitations.
The first is that as well as waves and ripples on the fluid surface, the solver can now generate splashes, making it possible to mimic waterfalls or water pouring over objects more accurately.
The second is that the ground surface beneath the liquid can now be animated.
In the video at the top of the story, you can see the new Dynamic Ground system in use: according to the online documentation, it can create glitches if objects are moved too fast, but it gives good-looking results when used to generate waves, or to block parts of the fluid.
Updated 2 April 2024: Cell Fluids 1.6 is out. (Full disclosure: it was actually released in February, but we missed it at the time.)
The update makes it possible to bake the simulation to a static mesh with flow maps, and export the baked animation to game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, as shown above.
Price and system requirements
Cell Fluids 1.6 is compatible with Blender 3.6+. It costs $20.
Read more about lightweight real-time fluid solver Cell Fluids on Blender Market
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