RF *.BIN to Cinema 4D Metaballs
Detailed Tutorial by InTheCity

Tutorial Difficulty
Easy to Intermediate

 

This tutorial covers the process of bringing an RF *.bin sequence
into Cinema 4D's Xpresso editor and working with Cinema's Metaball system
as an alternative to processing meshes in Real Flow.

Let's start with the basics

To begin I'll start with a standard sphere in Cinema 4D and 'right click' the model and Select Triangulate.

Next I create a simple animation in Cinema 4D to export to Real Flow.

With the Next Limit Plugin, choose NextLimit SD Exporter
(Ensure you type filename.sd)

That's the Basics over

Import your *.sd scene into Real Flow.
You can hit action to view your animation.

Add an emitter of your choice to the scene and place it inside the sphere.

Before I make any changes, I want to ensure that the scene is locked. This way I can run my initial particle solution
without the animation playing. Atleast until I'm happy that the sphere has enough liquid to run the simulation.

Now select a ~Collision ' Daemon from the Daemons list
Add also a Gravity object from the Daemons list
This won't be applied to the scene until you take the next step.

select 'ADD ALL'

Back now in your emitters list, you will find the emitter properties.
Max particles is set by default to 50000, we won't need this many for this example.
5000 will do, yes.

Time to save! You mean you didn't save yet?

And 'Action'
Firstly, notice the particles do not escape the sphere.
Secondly, notice the 'Num Particles' = 1364
Once this reaches Greater than or Equal to 5000,
the simulation will stop.

Once the particles stop, the simulation will go through a series of splashes and will eventuall relax.
I made a mistake with my intitial estimate of 5000 Max Particles and will run once again with only 2500.
You can 'Reset' the sim at any time and start again.

2500 Works well here.

Final Real Flow Stage

Before we release the 'Hold' button, I want to ensure that my particle *.bin sequence will be exported to RF folder.

Now you can unlock the solution and click 'Action'
Depending on the power of your computer, this next step can take a while.

If you prefer, you can watch the solution progress, or you can jump back into cinema to set things up.
One of the great things with the RF Plugin, is you can watch the Solution in Real Time in Cinema 4D.

The simulation is running and if you check your folder_name\project_name\particles\ folder
you will find a sequence of files named Circle0100000 or similar

Back to Cinema 4D

Add an 'XPresso' tag to a 'Null Object'

Now were going to bring the simulation into Cinema 4D via the '[NL] RealFlow Particles Loader v1.0'
Found in the XPresso Editor in either one of two places.

Not to confuse you, but on my office computer, the RF Particle Loader is located in;
Thinking Particles - TP Generator - RF Particle Loader



Locate your bin sequence @ folder_name\project_name\particles\

Bingo. What you're seeing is RF Particles displayed as Thinking Particle

Metaballs

Realflows custom metaballs are a great solution for your projects
But if you're in a hurry and the whole purpose of this tutorial is to show you
how to implement Cinema 4D's underestimated Metaball system.

Create an empty Polygon Object

In point mode, 'Add Point'
Why? It's better to use metaballs with single points rather than with geometry such as a cube
A single point with no shape is the simplest form of geometry, which is the smallest object
that can be used to form a 'Metaball'

Create a new 'Thinking Particles' node 'PShape' in the 'Xpresso Editor'

Drop the polygon object into the 'PShape' node and connect the two together.

Create a Thinking Particles - Particle Geometry

IMPORTANT STEPS

Metaballs at the scale you create them will be far too large to adapt to the solution you have created.
Basically to cut a long story short, if you drop the 'Particle Geometry' into the Metaball, you're asking for trouble
Because the density of the Metaball maybe far too large.

So now when you create a Metaball object,
Firstly scale it down to x=0.1 y=0.1 z=0.1

Also make the above the settings Higher than usual,
This way you start with a very low polygon object
and you can work your way towards something better

Drop the 'Particle Geometry' into the Metaball
You may not see anything, so let's turn off the 'TP Flakes'

^^ Like so ^^
and Back to the editor

Now we have something to work with, but we need to work again with the metaball settings.

It's best to work in incremental steps to avoid over-geometry

The solution is starting to work out now
And our Editor Subdivision remains low enough to view in RealTime
With Metaballs, the lower you go with subdivisions, the more geometry you will get.
In other words - The render Subdivision at 50m will have 4 times the Density of the Editor Subdivion at 200m

While at the same time, you will want to increase your Hull Value to suit the ideal shape.

Meaning, it will look 4 times better at Render Time.

FINAL LOOK

For my final view, I'll turn the Render Subdivision to 20 and here's what you get

And that's it. My apology if the tutorial seemed a little long winded, it was aimed at newbie's
as well as those more experienced with Cinema 4D..

Thanks

 

Stuart Lynch
Project1Media