Workflow
User interface
VeeDynamics UI is located in the N panel of the 3D viewport. The VeeDynamics tab consists of the following panels:
- Simulation - provides a button to start simulation and general simulation properties.
- Expert Properties - provides simulation properties for advanced use cases (adjust with caution).
- Object Properties - provides object properties of the current active objects (visible only if the active object is a mesh).
Object configuration
The main property of an object is Mode. It determines how the object is going to processed by the simulation. It can be set to the following values:
- Ignored - the object will be ignored by the simulation. It is the default value for all objects.
- Elastic Body - the object will behave as elastic body
- Collider - the object will behave like a rigid collider for elastic bodies. It won’t be affected by gravity. It can be animated in Blender using keyframes and the animation will be loaded into simulator.
The second property of an object is Material. Every object passed to the simulator has to have a material assigned. Materials can be shared by many objects (in a similar manner as rendering materials can be shared in Blender).
Every object passed to the simulator has to satisfy the topology requirements.
You can copy all object properties from the active object to all other selected objects by using the Copy To Selected button.
Keep in mind that only the visible objects will be passed to the simulator. A hidden object will be ignored, even if it has the Mode property set to a value other than Ignored.
Running the simulation
When you configure the objects for simulation, press the Run Simulation button to start the simulation process. Before the simulation starts, a File Explorer window will be spawned, where you need to specify the target location for simulation results. Simulation results are saved in a usdc file.
After the target location for the result is selected, the engine window will be spawned showing the simulation progress. The simulation will use the following properties of the Blender scene:
- Start frame
- End frame
- FPS.
When the simulation is done, close the engine window in order to load results into Blender.
Simulation result in Blender
The addon loaded a simulation result into Blender by adding the Mesh Sequence Cache modifier for every elastic body object which participated in the simulation. The modifier will be automatically initialized with the usdc file set to store the simulation result so object deformation is immediately visible in Blender.
The modifier name will be set to __VeeDynamics__. If an object already contains a modifier named __VeeDynamics__ on the stack (from a previous simulation run), the addon won’t add another modifier instance but it will use existing one to load the simulation result. That’s why it is important not to change the default modifier name __VeeDynamics__ manually.
How other modifiers on the object stack interact with the simulation depends on whether the __VeeDynamics__ modifier is already present on the stack:
- if __VeeDynamics__ is not present (first simulation run): all modifiers on the stack will be evaluated before sending the mesh to the simulator (so the changes introduced by modifiers will be visible during simulation). Note that the modifiers themselves will not be applied - the addon will not remove them from the stack. After the simulation is done, the __VeeDynamics__ modifier will be added at the very end of the stack to load the simulation result.
- if __VeeDynamics__ is already present on the stack (another simulation run): all the modifiers earlier than the __VeeDynamics__ modifier on the stack will be evaluated before sending the mesh to the simulator (they will not be applied though). All modifiers after the __VeeDynamics__ modifier (if any) will be ignored by the simulation - they will not be removed from the stack though. After the simulation is done, the simulation result will be loaded using the existing __VeeDynamics__ modifier. That means that all modifiers after __VeeDynamics__ on the stack will immediately affect the simulation result.