Newest Blender features (5.2)

[Janus]

Blender has released its latest new version (5.2), and as per usual, they have added a number of new features, two of which I'll touch on here. One is a material feature and the other a physics simulation feature. The material one is call "Thin wall", it is used when you want a material that lets some light through, light shades, for example, and is used in conjunction with the "transmission" setting, which determines how much light passes through. It particularly helps in the appearance when dealing with back lighting.
The second one is a revamping of the already existing cloth simulation. It adds "tearing", which, as the name suggests, allows the cloth to tear when stressed beyond preset limits.

The short video here demonstrates both features, with the ball ripping the cloth as it passes through, and the cloth being lit from the underside. The lower light is made large to produce both a preumbra and umbra effect on the cloth.



For comparison, this is a single frame rendered with the thin wall option turned off, and no other settings changed. Note the unusually brightness of the lower corner.

My next test is to see if I can create a "popping balloon" effect

 

[Janus]

Okay, this turned to out work out better than expected. What I bascially wanted to do was to have an effect where a balloon would inflate, expand, and once it reached a certain point would rip open.

The first issue was mimicing the inflation. The legacy cloth simulator had a pressure feature which allowed you to make an enclosed cloth object and increase the interior pressure which made it act as if you were pumping air into it. The new simulator hasn't incuded that feature yet, so I had to come up with a different solution.

What I decided to try was to put a second object inside the "balloon", and assign it as being a collider. I'd then scale this object up and have it expand the balloon from the inside. I wasn't sure it would work as I didn't know just how the simulator would treat this type of collider. It ended up working the first time.

I was also able to set the interior collider so it didn't render so that it behaved as an invisible object in the scene, and so that once the balloon ruptured its collider properties also went away so the "popped balloon" would no longer react to it.

Now it was just a matter of tweaking the cloth settings, such as stretchiness and breaking strain.

Finally, the visible appearance of the balloon's material. As the balloon expands and stretches the walls become thinner and more transparent:



Adjust the shape a bit and add a tied off opening, and you'd have a farly good balloon model simulation.