jawset visual computing

Physical simulation allows to create complex natural phenomena automatically, investing CPU time instead of artist time. Fluid simulation in particular produces some of the most complex results in computer graphics with very little manual input. By passing some of the control you have over every pixel to the simulation, you get very organic shapes and motions that add a new depth to your work. Some of the results are so complex, you can watch them over and over again and discover new details each time.

TURBULENCE.2D puts a state-of-the-art fluid simulator into your toolbox that provides many ways of using it's organic complexity in your work. Density (smoke or paint), fuel, temperature, color and texture coordinates can be injected into the fluid and visualized in several different render modes while flowing. Furthermore, a very precise, built-in Motion Blur can be added for fast flows.

Large, turbulent flame and smoke rendered with Motion Blur.

Text going up in detailed smoke.

Force or velocity, extraction and contraction, static or moving solid obstacles can affect the flow and allow for endless variantions. Animated textures can be rendered distorted, color-mixed or refracted by the fluid. Velocity or force can be added to the flow to create wind and other streams. It can also be extracted from the flow for use in separate effects like motion blur. Various alpha modes let you create unseen masking effects.

In TURBULENCE.2D, obstacles are solid objects that do not flow. They affect the fluid but the fluid does not affect them. You can use arbitrary shapes as solids - buckets, paddles, walls, ramps or text. The image below shows and example of text as a solid object, that forces green vapor to flow around it.

The velocity inputs in TURBULENCE.2D use Motion Vectors. Many other tools like motion blur effects use this representation, so you can combine them easily. Using velocity inputs you can for example create wind that blows your density, color or fuel around.

TURBULENCE.2D provides several render modes to visualize fluids. You can use several color gradients to control the appearance of several flowing materials. These include fire, smoke, color and texture. Texture can be distorted of refracted by the fluid.

TURBULENCE.2D contains a two fire models. One simulates fire as realistic as possible in 2D, the other creates stylized fire. The stylized fire produces very complex and psychedelic animations.

Green vapor pouring over solid text obstacles.

Stylized fire created with one of the combustion models.

Fluid simulation is computationally very intensive and typically, fluid software is pretty slow. TURBULENCE.2D is optimized for speed. Besides using all available processor cores, it also supports the graphics processor (GPU) to be used to accelerate the simulation up to 10 times. This allows for very intuitive experimentation at interactive frame rates. See this page for more details on how to enable GPU Support on your machine.

You can find more information about all the features in the user manual. Also check out the gallery for more examples of the different simulation and rendering modes.