Unreal Fluid Dynamics

Welcome

I want to build a Virtual World in Unreal Engine, with the purpose of educating Fluid Dynamics. Still a lot of work has to be done.

First video on the project

Update June 2018
Followed several online courses on using blueprints in Unreal Engine.
See https://unreal.fluiddynamics.eu/main-water-system-in-unreal/

First video will follow soon?

Update October 2017. After a long time following courses on how to build in Unreal Engine, I finally have started with building blueprints. Busy building a watersystem

Update may 2017. I have reactivated the project. Was too busy with ordinary work :-). I am following a course on Udemy (Unreal Engine 4: How to Develop Your First Two Games) to get my skills on a higher level.

Source Controle

I am using perforce

Unreal documentation : https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Basics/SourceControl/InEditor/index.html

https://allarsblog.com/2017/04/05/populating-perforce-with-an-unreal-engine-source-build/

Streaming starts at 1:27 h

from 23 min

M_FD_Surfacewater

Material for the surface water on the island

Uses Absolute World Position Node.

How to get the flow direction according to the direction of the channel?

General notes

With vertex color, you can control 4 values (red, green, blue, alpha)
red = speed x
green = speed y
blue =?
alpha =?
I don’t get this working yet

Water material

I looked into different tutorials. In this page step for step my water material.

Notes:

New for me, in editor : Lit > Optimization viewmodes > Shader complexity.
Documentation on shader complexity (old UE 4.9)

Result:

Tiling will be adjusted so that the “basic” block is 1 * 1 m. Each Branch in the FD_watersystem will have its own instance of the watermaterial. In BP I can set the parameters for each branch.

S Scalervector
Append x and y

Future optimisations

Small wave/ ripples by wind. So direction is based on wind.
Swimmable water?
Particles
vertex painting

Replication

To get a multiplayer working properly replication is important. Until now I have no knowledge on replication?

Aim is to use blueprints

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Replication

Gamelift

Server site form amazon. The nice thing is that you pay per hour.

https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/

Tutorials

Python in Unreal

Niagara Particle system

Editor Utility Widgets

Esri CityEngine

Met deze tool kan je op basis van GIS 3d modellen van steden maken. Deze zijn vervolgens ook weer in Unreal in te lezen en in VR te bekijken

Je moet een account aanmaken bij de Nederlandse website van Esri. Deze is 22 dagen geldig. Ik had in eerste instantie een account aangemaakt bij de Amerikaanse website, maar kreeg toen in CityEngine geen toegang tot maaiveldhoogtes. Tip: gebruik niet Google of FB, dat geeft later problemen bij het inloggen in CityEngine.

Vervolgens ga je CityEngine installeren. Er is een 30 dagen trail beschikbaar.

Voor het inlezen van CityEngine modellen zijn er 2 templates in Unreal Engine. Let op deze werken alleen bij Unreal versie 2.20 (Op dit moment nog niet bij versie 2.21). Kortom 2.20 zal je ook moeten installeren. De onderstaande template komen automatisch met het installeren van Unreal Studio.

Hoe je met CityEngine moet werken ga ik hier niet uitleggen. Er zijn goede tutorials.