In this tab, you can control all the settings that drive the look of your sim.
At the top, you have a time scale control that scales the effects of all operations making the simulation behave slower or faster.
Controls are separated into two sections. At the top, you have a list of sliders and toggles that let you enable and change the strength of the various forces.
Below you have extra settings tabs for each of the forces. Some forces are simple enough that all they need is a strength slider. Some are more advanced, like turbulence, that has many additional options.
Some forces also let you control them with a ramp based on the value of a field, the speed of velocity, position along an axis, or a custom field. Dissipation, for example, has a ramp on by default. The hotter the temperature, the less dissipation you will get.
To control a force with a custom field create a float VDB with the name control1, control2, or control3 and include it with the rest of your VDB sources. Then choose the corresponding option in the Control Field’s Field parameter.
The field can have a range of values to scale the effect of the force in different regions. The ramp will allow you to remap the range of values of the source control field just like any other field.
<aside> 💡 The control fields will not be included in the simulation and will not be output. It’s just a temporary utility field used to drive forces.
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Percent-based forces such as dissipation and cooling rate work based on the idea that some percentage of value is lost per time increment. The time increment is defined by the menu next to these parameters. You can choose to have the force work on a percent per second, per frame, none (the full amount each simulation step), or also keep the time scale of the simulation in mind. This is helpful if you have a force that needs to react faster than some percentage lost per second.
