Flood Simulation

[ziadfilfili]

Hello,

I saw on Facebook this video.
I was wondering if City Engine can do flood simulation as found under the link below?
Or Was that real flow ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcGXGTiV0Zw

Regards,

[MatthiasBuehler1]

Hi !

This was done with RealFlow.

CityEngine is 'just' a procedural modeling application, so it has no 'flooding' or other animation features.

I've been playing a lot with RealFlow in past and have been thinking of creating a similar thing, but there are some limitations in RF to create something really convincing on such a scale.

Need flood sims for work or would it be rather a hobby project ?

[ziadfilfili]

Hi,

This is what I thought.

Would be glad if you can assist me with some flood sims.
Any tutorials ?

Regards,

[MatthiasBuehler1]

Hi !

It's an interesting topic.


The main thing I need to know is :

Is it rather a VFX project, where you:
- work with CFD (computational fluid dynamics) techniques with 'particle based' / 'grid based' techonolies ( using RealFlow, PhoenixFD, Naiad, [FlowLine] or an other software )

or if it's more an engineering project, where you're :
- basically just interested in the scientific 'end result'.


Based on this, the approaches may be entirely different.

Lemme know. 🙂

Matt

[ziadfilfili]

Hi,

Its more for an Engineering project and want to show flood sims scientific result and how would they act towards buildings, streets, and valley nearby as well.

Btw can't I use a mix of both, the scientific result and vfx together ?
I can make some visual effects in a later on phase using Autodesk Maya and some after effects techniques.

Thanks,


The main thing I need to know is :

Is it rather a VFX project, where you:
- work with CFD (computational fluid dynamics) techniques with 'particle based' / 'grid based' techonolies ( using RealFlow, PhoenixFD, Naiad, [FlowLine] or an other software )

or if it's more an engineering project, where you're :
- basically just interested in the scientific 'end result'.


Based on this, the approaches may be entirely different.

Lemme know.

[MatthiasBuehler1]

Hi !

Something like this ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_wJ8vYtMmU
🙂

If you want scientific precision, I'd use the ArcGIS tools which were built specifically for this task that calculate those things with raster files ( using an image based process ) to calculate the height of the resulting flood water above terrain at each point in the city.

You could use that image and create a new terrain layer in CityEngine and use this as base for an animated water shader *. It seems the above user did something very similar in that video above.

*) using something like 0:45 here : http://vimeo.com/55865390#at=0



If you want to go without image-based process but rather particle based, I guess you would lose some scientific rationality because the way how these simulations are run are always a little unpredictable and only hardly properly measurable (m3, flood level) because the only real output usually is a polygonal mesh which can only hardly be converted to a comprehensible hazard-zone map.

So the rendering / visualization of the flood is 1 task - the display of the raw statistical data (maps & metrics) is an other.

Cheers !

M.

[ZorkoSostaric]

That video got me intrigued too so I have tried RealFlow and local data exported from CityEngine. Results look good but for better simulation (not focused on VFX) that accounts building's structural "resistance" a XFlow from the same company was recommended. I haven't tried it yet as I hoping to get an evaluation version.

In any case simulation is going to take a while...

[MatthiasBuehler1]

Hi Zorko !


Cool you're interested in this too !

I have not tried xFlow yet, I just have some experience with RealFlow.

Have some doubts that xFlow will perform well on the scale of a city.. But if you try it, let us know how it goes !

Matt