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Frequently Asked Questions
The purpose of this page is to provide responses to questions that we are frequently asked.
- Do you plan to support Blender 2.8?
- Are future version updates free?
- Can I use the addon for commercial purposes?
- How is the OpenFLIP addon licensed?
- Is the OpenFLIP addon supported on Mac OS X and Linux?
- How can I tell if the simulator is working in the Demo?
- Can the fluid simulation push around rigid body objects?
- Does the OpenFLIP simulator support Blender forces and force fields?
- My CPU is running under 100% usage while simulating. Is this normal?
- Is the OpenFLIP simulator GPU accelerated?
Yes, we do plan to support Blender 2.8. We need to wait for Blender to finalize the Blender Python API for addons before we can begin making the necessary changes to support Blender 2.8. The Blender Python API should be released when the Blender 2.8 beta becomes available.
Yes! All future version updates for the product are provided at no extra cost.
You will find downloads to the latest addon version in your Blender Market account orders section. If you purchased the product without a Blender Market account, you will find a link to the downloads in your purchase confirmation email.
Yes! Everything that you create with the addon is completely owned by you. There are no restrictions for what you can and cannot do with the content that you create.
The OpenFLIP addon and content uses multiple licenses: GPL, MIT, and Standard Royalty Free. In general:
- The Blender addon code is licensed under the GPL.
- The fluid engine is licensed under the MIT license.
- Some addon and product content will be using a Standard Royalty Free license. This license may cover content such as media (images/textures/videos), Blend files, materials, presets. Source code files will state their license at the top of the file. Assets will include a license file and information in their containing directory.
At this moment, support for Mac OS X and Linux is experimental. This means that the addon has not yet undergone extensive testing on OS X and Linux operating systems. For the current status of Mac OS X and Linux support, see this document.
If you are planning to purchase the addon for use on OS X or Linux we first highly recommend trying the OpenFLIP Demo to test if the simulator will work on your system.
If you are able to begin baking a simulation and can view the simulation meshes, that is a good indicator that there are no compatibility issues with the simulator and your operating system. Running the Fluid in and Invisible Box and Viscous Net demo scenes will test all major features of the simulation engine.
The fluid simulator is not able to affect the motion of rigid body objects. Obstacle objects can push around the fluid, but fluid is not able to push around obstacles. This is because there is not a way to communicate fluid forces with Blender's rigid body simulator.
At the moment, the simulator does not support Blender forces or force fields. However, this is a popular feature request and we do plan to add this in a future update! See the feature request here: #269.
Yes, it is normal for your CPU to run under 100% usage on average. CPU usage may be low on lower resolution simulations and is generally higher on high resolution simulations. Here are some explanations why the simulator is not running at 100% usage:
- Fluid simulation is very memory heavy problem and memory access is slow compared to how fast your CPU is. In the simulator, there are many threads accessing large amounts of memory at the same time. The CPU threads must occasionally stop calculations and wait for data to be fetched from memory and this is what commonly causes decreased CPU usage in the simulator.
- Some calculations in the simulator are not able to be multithreaded efficiently and must be run on a single core. These sections of calculations create a bottleneck which lowers average CPU usage.
- The simulator may be running with too many threads enabled. It is possible that simulations could slow down from the overhead of running more threads than the simulator can handle efficiently. Some users with certain hardware (e.g. Intel Xeon CPU) may benefit from simulating with less threads enabled. You may experiment by changing the number of enabled threads in the OpenFLIP Advanced Settings. Try using half the number of threads and test whether you experience a speed-up in baking times.
The OpenFLIP simulator is not GPU accelerated. As of addon version 1.0.4, GPU acceleration features using OpenCL have been removed and all GPU methods have been entirely replaced with higher performance CPU methods.