Blender

From OpenFOAMWiki
Revision as of 16:29, 29 July 2019 by Tkeskita (Talk | contribs)



1 Introduction

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. This page lists links for using Blender with/for OpenFOAM.


Blender is a general purpose 3D content creation suite. Therefore it has several pros and cons, such as:

Pros 
Large user base and a lot of documentation, books and add-ons are available. Blender can be a powerful modelling tool when mastered.
Cons 
Steep learning curve. If you don't know how to use Blender, it can be cumbersome for even simple tasks such as surface repair or for simply creating a sphere or cube.


Wiki pages for using Blender with OpenFOAM:

  • Unstructured Grids Addon for Blender 2.8
  • SnappyHexMesh GUI Addon for Blender 2.8
  • SwiftBlock - An addon for Blender acting as a GUI for creating the dictionary blockMeshDict, that lets the user create the desired hexahedral block structure as a mesh object within Blender 3D.
  • SwiftSnap - Another addon for Blender that acts as a GUI for creating the dictionary snappyHexMeshDict, that lets the user have full control over how and which feature lines are provided to snappyHexMesh. Further, the addon utilises Blender materials to let the user specify patches' names, resolution settings and mesh wall layers.


Blender related links outside wiki which OpenFOAM users may find useful:


Here is a complete reference list of wiki pages that describe how to use Blender with/for OpenFOAM:


2 Render OpenFOAM solutions with Blender

All who are interested for rendering numerical solutions using Blender can start with the following scripts build by T. Holzmann: Blender Scripts You will find two python scripts. One is for Paraview (export x3d scenes) that is not complicated. The other one is used by Blender. You have to modify the Blender script in a way that it fit to your simulation and exported x3d scene. Good luck and have fun.

2.1 General proceeding

  • Run your simulation
  • Open Paraview and create your scene (save view)
  • Modify the paraview.py python script
  • Run the paraview.py script to export all timesteps (or only one time step) as *.x3d file(s)
  • Modify the blender.py python script that it fit to your simulation
    • Tipp: Start without the loop (500 replaced with 1) and see how the script works
    • Tipp: Uncomment the last lines in the script (remove files and rendering)
    • Take a half day and watch tutorials for Blender (to get a bit more familiar), I recommend Jacob Lewis
  • After the python script works well and like you want, take a rest and render the guys