Blender 2.8+ port - again.

[Nolram12345]

Its been about 3 years since the Blender 2.8+ series of versions have come out, and by now most Blender tools and artist have moved on to these versions. It would be very convinient to have a port for newer Blender versions, for example for usage with the Eevee renderer and the better multicore support.

[KaiKostack]

I know, it would be nice to have the BCB in Blender 2.8+ already, but there are still some uncertainties left that I would like to see being resolved before taking that step. Good performance, for instance, requires the Fracture Modifier to be in 2.8+ as well, but the developer of the 2.79 FM has not yet made the final decision to port it over. Without it, however, the BCB would be very slow.

In the meantime you can use Blender 2.79 FM + BCB for simulations only and export your results to Blender 2.8+ for rendering. Pointcache formats such as .mdd or .pc2 are suitable for exporting your simulations, Alembic might work as well.

Steps for .mdd:

• Export BCB/FM bake object to .mdd via exporter
• Apply BCB/FM bake object at start frame and save under new .blend
• Append applied BCB/FM bake object to your 2.8+ project file where you want to use it
• Add Mesh Cache modifier and point it to the .mdd file

Done.

For Alembic simply use the respective exporter and importer which should be self-explanatory.

[Nolram12345]

Thank you for your reply. From what I last had known about FM was that the port was actually in-progress, however that seems to have been an empty claim according to what you said. And why exactly would BCB be slower without FM ? Also, I don't really care about rendering too much but rather about workflow. 2.8 is just A LOT more pleasant to use.

[KaiKostack]

It's not an empty claim but as I said, there is no final decision if this is the way to continue the FM project or if a redesign would be better.

The BCB can use the highly optimized rigid body management of the FM, which is orders of magnitude faster than the standard object management of Blender. If you ever had to work with like 10,000+ elements in viewport then you'll understand.

[Nolram12345]

So FM for 2.8+ is something that is still being considered ? Interesting, I would absolutely love to see it in newer Blender versions. Having a more optimized rigid body management makes sense of course, thats a good point I wasn't aware of. So a BCB port to 2.8 would require FM to be ported first ?

[KaiKostack]

The FM is not necessarily a requirement but of course I would like to see the BCB being capable of using the full potential of Bullet in Blender 2.8+. Time will tell how this can be accomplished.