What are /r/Simulated's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Totally right. In Universe Sandbox ² when all light sources are gone (or deleted), we automatically add a light so you can still see what's happening (but even that you can turn off if you wanted).

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ². Let me know if you've got any questions.

We've got a ton of features we want to add (and are actively working on). In fact, we just brought on another astrophysics to help make the simulation more robust and accurate.

The short answer is: better surface simulation, planet-destroying lasers, adding support for languages other than English, improved stellar evolution, better collisions between planets, bouncing and breaking apart human-sized objects, megastructures, better galaxies, a more intuitive VR experience, and a mobile version.

You can check out our updated 2017 roadmap for more details.

The moons of all the planets would continue to orbit their planets (like all the moons of Jupiter or our own), but beyond existing orbits, everything else would drift apart forever.

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

Great question. Just ran the simulation myself, by opening 'Solar System' and deleting the Sun. Looks to be around 10 days per second (looks like OP added that it's 15 days per second). Our gif capture feature sometimes makes videos run faster, so that might explain the difference.

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

This simulation is running at 10-15 days per second, so u/taaffe7's answer of 'a few months' is generally correct.

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

Made in Houdini and rendered with Redshift. The model is from MecaBricks.com. I simulated the bricks breaking and falling apart, and then simulated the re-assembly of the pieces. The simulation was almost real time, and it took about 1 hour to render.

Thanks so much. Trying to make the simulator as realistic as possible given the constraints of running a real-time simulator on a normal computer is a fun challenge. We have many more features planned.

Answered this elsewhere:

It's a fake light. This was simulated using Universe Sandbox ² and when all light sources are gone (or deleted) it automatically adds a sun-like light source so you can still see what's happening (but even that you can turn off if you wanted).

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

Great question. I'm not sure, but that does sound reasonable.

I do know that the climate simulation that Universe Sandbox ² is running isn't quite that robust and that the cloud cover is not really simulated at all (at the moment). These are all details I hope to address in future updates to the software.

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

Good question... and I'm not 100% sure, but I think it might be something like this:

If it was cold enough... then any precipitation at all would stay frozen. And once the whole planet was super cold, I'd imagine climate would go out the window and eventually the entire planet would be covered with a layer of snow/ice.

That said, the climate simulation that Universe Sandbox ² uses is quite simplistic and we're not actually tracking rain/snowfall, but simply making the land white once it gets cold enough. I still think that the deserts would go white in reality (but please, someone let me know if I'm wrong).

Lots and lots of tutorials and messing around.

I'd recommend checking out some of the tutorials on the official Blender site or the r/blender tutorial wiki

Great question. That's one of a handful of features in the original version that we still haven't added to Universe Sandbox ². Being able to see the Lagrange points and place bodies at them is coming in a future update.

We are working on a major overhault to stellar evolution but that doesn't include contact binaries (so it may not be helpful to you). I agree that would be awesome to simulate. We'll definitly add it to our list of simulation wants.

And glad you enjoyed the VR mode. We're still working on making that better too!

Works as smoothly as in a video if you have powerful enough device. Available on Google Play and Appstore.

If you liked that you should most definitely have a look at The powder toy, it's much more advanced than danball (although less swanky than OPs game) and still actively developed.

The Apprentice version of Houdini has everything that the full version does with the exception of a limit of 720p watermarked renders and no crossover tools in Unreal Engine 4/Maya (etc.)

as stated here.. https://www.sidefx.com/buy/

It wouldn't... Jupiter is only 1/1048th the mass of our Sun. It would just fly off in a straight line like everything else.

Easy enough to try in Universe Sandbox ². Just open the Solar System, select the Sun, and press delete.

Most 3D modelling programs come with rigid and soft body, smoke, liquid, and particles simulators.

This one was done with blender(https://www.blender.org/). Its interface is quite overwhelming for beginners but it's free and extremely powerful, and the tutorials on YouTube are good.
There's a link in the sidebar if you wanna dig into it.

We're at 15 team members, are financially self-sufficient, 100% independent of any publishers, and have grand plans for the next year. Everything is going better than I could have imagined, thanks!

My dad downloaded a very simple CGA gravity simulator years from a dial-up BBS years ago but I was disappointed with how little control there was. I wrote my first gravity simulator when I was still in high school, picked the idea up a few more times over the years, and this last time just never stopped working on it.

I'm still fascinated with how beautiful gravity is... and yet how simple the equation that describes that behavior is (turns out simulating everything else is stupidly complicated... like climate).

And it's interesting because when I started working on the project it was just for fun, I had no commercial ambitions. Through combination of privilege, luck, a good idea, decent execution, and not messing up opportunities as they presented themselves I've been working on this project for the past 10 years (8 years full time). Over the last 6 years, I've had the honor of working with people much smarter than me and we're up to a team of 15 (scroll to the bottom for the team list) and totally self-sufficient from sales of this title.

I feel very grateful to be working on a project that is both financially successful and that I believe brings value to the world. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

Totally a fair critique, Universe Sandbox ² does not currently do a great job of collisions between equal sized bodies. We're working on a complete rewrite of our custom physics engine and a new focus is what we're calling 'total body fragmentation' which will make two Earth colliding both more realistic and visually satisfying.

We expect to be improving this simulator for a long time and just brought on another astrophysics to the team.

Let me know if you have any questions...

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

I did a little simulation to check out FLIP Fluids Blender add-on. Simulating this took under 8 hours, and rendering a bit more than that. The foam ended up looking somewhat grainy because I lowered the whitewater particle amount in the simulation settings, but I was pretty happy with the result nonetheless!

The water shader I used is from Brandon Funk: https://gumroad.com/l/cycles-water

> I think some of the test renders wouldve looked even more interesting than your final render

I had seen this video of Chris Hadfield wringing out a wet washcloth on the International Space Station and I was facinated with how 'low profile' the water acted. Maybe next time I'll make an exploding washcloth >:)

> how do you create such a smooth preview of the 3D view?

Blender has an OpenGL render function that can either capture a single image, or advance frame by frame capturing your whole timeline. It respects your render resolution and file output settings allowing you to encode video previews.

My system specs are:

• processor: core i7 5930K OC to 4.4GHz

• RAM: 64 gigs (Mostly a luxury, but I've actually maxed it out a few times)

• GPU: GTX980 Ti 6144 MB

Thank you!

It was made in a program called Blender. It's an open source program for modeling, animation, physics simulations, and all kinds of other stuff. It's free, community built and very powerful! If you're interested in it, there's a load of good tutorials on youtube to get you started!

https://www.blender.org

Yes. I did this all using a program called "Blender."

It is completely free, but is hard for beginners due to its user interface. Thankfully, a plethora of tutorials are available for Blender on all kinds of subjects. You'll need patience and practice to get accompanied with said interface. And to be honest, I've been using it for about a year and I still don't know how to do certain things.

So how did I do it? Well, first I started with the platform. I started with a sphere and "cut out" the craters using other spheres. As for the honey, Blender has a built-in fluid simulator. I was messing around with different parameters, with nothing particular in mind, and eventually had something I thought looked cool. Then, I told the fluid to collide with the platform.

Finally, I rendered the project into a video, which took my laptop 5 hours to do (that's where the patience come in handy).

If you are interested, I really really recommend this video.

Personally, I use Cinema4D, but for a beginner, I'd recommend Blender as it's free, and you can set it to use GPU to render, whereas with C4D, you'd have to pay for Octane or something of the sort.

Also, there are a metric butt load of tutorials online, it probably wouldn't be hard to get to grips with it

Just know that you'll probably have a lot of nights with your PC whirring away, rendering something out, because if you want it to look good, it'll (obviously) take longer.

We're a team of 15 who make our living by selling copies of Universe Sandbox ². The only reason we're able to continue to add new features and update the game is because of the people that buy it.

Thanks so much. It was everyone that bought the first one that made the sequel possible (the entire project has been self-funded). And now that the sequel is financially self-sufficient, and we expect to be working on it for a long time to come.

I tried a Hackintosh. Every single software update broke it. And there were often weird audio/video problems. And so now I'm expected to scour Hackintosh forums to fix this shit, just so I can get back to work/play? I just don't have that kind of time. And I want (and often need to, since I'm a developer) run the latest OS patch. Especially in today's security environment!

Have you ever bought and sold Apple hardware AND PC hardware? Because it sounds like you haven't. I have, and speak from experience. Apple stuff holds its value waaaaay better.

Don't just take my word for it though. “Apple products are generally worth about twice as much as other devices at the same period in their lifecycle,” says Trachsel. Literally, a used broken Mac will sell for as much as a used working PC of the same specs. (Don't believe me? Read the article, or check eBay.)

You want to go Hackintosh, you have to make it your thing. You have to become that Hackintosh guy. I don't want to make the time for that. If it was a feasible solution, almost everyone would be doing it... and that's not what's happening.

And yet, I'm going to get downvoted, just for spouting facts that people don't want to hear. As usual.

How am I "ripping myself off" when I feel like I'm getting what I'm paying for? This is simply translated as "I don't see the value that you do." If you ask me, someone who pays full price for World Series tickets is "ripping themselves off" but I don't go around saying that because I know I'm just not seeing the value but they are.

This is the tutorial I watched to help build the particle system: https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/applied-houdini-particles-i-introduction-to-particles/

Bake: 2-3 Minutes

Render: ~30 minutes

Mantra is surprisingly fast when rending particles but seems to be kinda slow with most other things. Am I doing something wrong or should I be looking at a 3rd party renderer to help speed things up?

For the model I used MagicaVoxel, which is a nice simple program for models which I love, and then I imported it into blender. For the water animation I pretty much followed this tutorial which is really nice for beginners.

edit: also you have to make the model an obstacle to make sure it will interact with the water, as you can see I didn't do that for the pipe and the water is going right through it.

That's looking a lot better! Something to think about would be desaturating the color of the balls just a little bit, very little in the real world is 100% red or 100% blue. It will also add a little more interest and detail to your reflections. Right now, the blue ball reflects 100% blue light toward the red ball but the red ball has no components to reflect back to the camera, hence the black spot.

Another suggestion is to add a subdivision modifier to the balls so that they look rounder in the render. The cool thing about adding the modifier is that it has separate settings for View and Render. If you set the View to 0 or 1, your 3D view in Blender will be nice and responsive and all the extra geometry will only be added during render. You can read about that here.

They have a great learning center on their site. I am also partial to Lynda.com; I have learned a lot from that site.

Pulled some slime sfx from freesound.org

I mixed and matched a few of them, and faded some louder ones in during the transitions between shots to account for the faster morphs during those parts.

Good question. It's definitely more simulation than a scripted sequence.

You can read all about our climate simulation on our blog.

The planet collisions are definitely simulations but are very low granularity as you point out. That doesn't make them scripted though. The more powerful your computer the more fragments and objects your computer can use and the better and more accurate the collisions look.

Also, note that any object in the game can be selected and its properties examined. We're certainly trying to be transparent about exactly what's happening.

While everything is subject to change... our current plan is to release a premium mobile version (you buy it outright as opposed to being free with in-game purchases) that does everything the desktop version does.

Here's a sneak peek at our mobile design efforts: http://universesandbox.com/blog/2017/11/dynamic-bottom-bar/

Once we release the Space Megastructures update.

Seriously... we're working on it. They're really fun to destroy with a massive black hole.

That sounds right... most of the atmosphere would freeze out onto the surface.

The current climate simulation isn't yet handling atmosphere at this level of granularity. We're very close to pushing a new update that will improve the handling of our surface simulation and extending it for more localized and accurate climate simulation is part of the plan.

> Also, how long would it take to go from normal to frozen solid?

You mean the atmosphere?

We launched sales of Universe Sandbox ² 1 year before it's initial release on Steam in August of 2015.

The original was first available in May of 2008 and on Steam, April 29, 2011.

So glad you've enjoyed it.

I have a game idea that would use these sound effects. it's a puzzle. I even made a mockup of it that you can find here:

https://www.tiktok.com/@alborz.design/video/6802065917611166981

(Sorry for the tiktok link) All I need now is a person that knows enough about unity to turn this into a mobile game.

I can work on this for free and share the profits. For the game developer I think 50,000 for 6 months should be enough.

That's a 95% discount for you :)

Try to keep your pants on but ➡ https://aws.amazon.com/free/. 12 months free, 750 hours per month of compute time. Then there's other things that are always free but not likely relavent to most people. Click on grey categories (like 12 months free, always free, etc).

Yes SLI should be fine, I just meant run them in parallel. Sorry, it was bad wording.

I would just download Blender (https://www.blender.org) and run one or two of their benchmark scenes (https://code.blender.org/2016/02/new-cycles-benchmark/). These are heavy scenes with absurd amounts of light to trace. They'll really give you a feel for how your system can render.

Alternately, I can send you a ready-to-render animation with my average time-per-frame and you can run that render to check.

Download blender then look up how to do a basic fluid simulation in it. A basic fluid simulation isn't too hard to do, but getting lighting, color, render settings, etc. right is quite the challenge.

Download Blender (it’s free and very good), read and/or watch tutorials and make some basic objects. If you like it, keep practicing and learning.

I used [Lynda](Lynda.com) for a very helpful video tutorial series, my local library provides access to it so it’s worth looking into if yours does. If they don’t, the 30 day trial is plenty of time.

itch.io

is a good and simple one that won't take you hours to learn how to use like github. It's meant for distributing your indie games but there's a lot of miscellaneous software like your project on there too.

Honestly, it's more of "imitated" than it is "simulated," but still I thought you all might enjoy it.

The full version is a seamless loop. I've made it available for download on vimeo. You are free to use it in non-commercial projects under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Enjoy!

i could send you the raw video without reddit compression and you could use any wallpaper manager that allows you to use a video as background likedisplayfusion or any alternative, message me and I'll send you the video if you're interested

Vellum Constraints

Kind of technical, but seems like a group of geometrical equations used for animation of cloth, hair, or whatnot. Perhaps Vellum Solver gives more information, but this stuff is not my forte. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Vellum Solver

Some good discussions here https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/57264/

Accelerometer API here https://whatwebcando.today/device-motion.html ... but I think it’s opt-in under Safari advanced settings on iOS 12.

In case you do not know there is a screw modifier that makes screw making a lot easier and less destructive. Then you would just need to surround the screw with a cylinder.

https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/modifiers/generate/screw.html

Don't really do tutorials. (no mic etc) Also there are so many good ones out there. I suggest a beginner tutorial for example for c4d or blender (Which is a great free program you can try out) Then when you feel somewhat familiar with the interface you can dive alittle deeper into first some simple dynamics tutorials and continue from there. Go here https://www.blender.org/ download, and then do some youtube searches and you are ready to go. :)

Great question. The clouds shouldn't be there after a while as they would freeze out and fall to the surface, Universe Sandbox ² doesn't currently handle this level of simulation granulaity, but we're working on it.

I am the creator & director of Universe Sandbox ².

Universe Sandbox ² is a completely unique experience unlike anything else you can play on your computer. If you're interested in asking fantastical what-if questions about the universe, you're likely to have a great time.

It's more common to use N-body models to solve PDE's than the reverse, although that's also a thing and is called "mean field method". Check this page out.

Wait that auction is just for the rubber plug.... Doh!

Found this cheap one on Amazon. No motor and is only 5" long

Nice, how the hell people pull recommendations like this out of their ass I’ll never know. reddit is crazy cool.

Amazon link for anyone interested (no affiliate link or anything) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000VB2RZE

To answer your questions:

> Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films revealed “Troll,” a cinematic tech demo, directed by Bjorne Larson, that raises the bar for ray-traced scenes in Unreal Engine 4, featuring unprecedented levels of cinematic-quality lighting in a real-time short.

&

> Special thanks to NVIDIA, whose high-performance ray-tracing technology allowed the teams to complete this project with just a single graphics card, the RTX 2080 Ti.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/troll-showcases-unreal-engine-4-22-ray-tracing-with-unprecedented-cinematic-quality-lighting

It goes in the base and pulls the sphere downward when it's almost at the bottom, then disables as it reaches the bottom. They make them IRL although without spiral tubes. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09TRH3K1C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_W84HTWP9H6707MJGVEDS?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Definitely, 50% upfront deposit always and the rest paid to receive the deliverables. Have The Win Without Pitching Manifesto to thank for this.

This NYT article has an embedded video showing a scale model recreation of the flood that FYFD is pretty accurate to accounts of the time!

Not sure what OP uses, but yes it is.

You probably want to check out Blender: https://www.blender.org/

You can do all kinds of models and simulations with it, check out YouTube. There are a bunch of tutorials.

Thanks! I used the Python built-in ctypes module for passing data between Python/C and for executing C library functions.

I used this Stack Overflow post as a reference for how to use the ctypes module to wrap a C++ class.

Here's the link:

https://mega.nz/#!lkI1FIxI!auJtW-CQr6nbrPHzBgz7qcdZeeQVoA9-264mXwvriO8

File is 960MB compressed, 2.3GB uncompressed.

You'll need to change the WATER_FILEPATH_DIRECTORY path in the script to the 'bakefiles' folder. After that, press 'run script' and then 'animation' to start rendering.

The shit that people make with what appears to be total chaos is utterly astounding.

A while ago I downloaded a life simulator called Golly and went through all the things people created.

There are glider guns that created movers that merge to create an even bigger ship and there are even computers built inside the game.

>Watch our Enterprise Summer Sizzle Reel for 2019! Highlighting some of the spectacular things the UE4 community have achieved over the past months, this is a showcase of work spanning film, augmented reality broadcast, digital humans, and automotive and architectural visualization. Learn more at https://www.unrealengine.com/studio

Me too, welcome! This was made in Blender (it’s free and open source), after hours of YouTube tutorials and googling problems I wanted to solve - don’t let how initially overwhelming it is put you off, aim for something you want to make a problem solve your way there.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible, which is as daunting as it is exciting...

I strongly recommend Blender. For a number of reasons, but chiefly because it's free! I'm not sure about specific tutorials, but there are tons of them around. If you learn best by watching, start on youtube. There's also an active community here on reddit for blender, though you can probably learn a lot on your own.

Yes it's called blender and you can download it from here and if you want to start learning how to use it I've written a short article on that topic, hopefully you find it useful.

Try downloading blender and follow tutorials. It's free and there's a ton of help out there.

https://www.blender.org/

For 3D printing, that's expensive if you go the CNC route, and mildly affordable to do the plastic route,but difficult for something strong enough for a coffee table.

Might be easier to get planes of 3D objects you made in blender, use them like blueprints or trace them, then hand tool it on wood.

Good luck!

Whoops, forgot to mention the software the addon is for! This is an addon for the Blender 3D software. The FLIP Fluids addon product page can be found here: https://blendermarket.com/products/flipfluids

Blender is used for both simulation and rendering. This animation was rendered in the Blender Cycles engine.

You can check out the free software Handbrake, which can reduce video sizes. It has a Discord setting, but even just running it through once or decreasing resolution could work. Hope this helps!

This book has the best color combinations I've ever seen. But they're in CMYK, not RGB, so you'd need to translate them.

https://www.amazon.com/Designers-Guide-Color-Combinations-dp-0891348573/dp/0891348573

I've spent some time and optimized the memory usage as much as I could for the next update so hopefully that'll improve things a bit. It's going to be a big update though, so it'll probably take a couple of weeks before it's out.

If there are any other issues you come across, feel free to let me know over here: https://itch.io/t/226420/bugs

Something I saw after I posted my question on this page in the Demo/FAQ section on the right, the link to the 2.57 Bullet Physics tests. There are some files in there that demo the rigid body constraints but the comments are terse. It looks like blender's rigid body and bullet physics stuff is a bunch of python scripts from this site; sheesh, the power of python.

https://www.blender.org/support/

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned this, but there is a really creepy SCP fangame. You encounter several SCPs there, in a randomly generated layout of the SCP foundation. It's called "SCP containment breach"

It's a game for windows and can be found here

Download The Powdertoy, it is an even better simulation game. Plus, you can download thousands of user created simulations such as jet engines, bombs and nuclear power plants and stuff. http://powdertoy.co.uk

Dont compare yourself to others, ive been doing this for many years.

They have a free version of Houdini called Apprentice, it has some limitations like it only exports a specific apprentice file.

https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/

This site is great to see and download files of how people set up some systems:

https://www.hdbp.io/

I put out a simpler version of my rolling monster thing that i posted previously

Houdini Apprentice is free and primarily designed for simulations. Liquids, fire, smoke, shattering, collapsing buildings, and destruction is the bread and butter of Houdini.

1: Get the software. You can choose from stuff like Houdini, Blender, Etc.

2: Join the discord and subreddit for that software so your individual questions and be answered, also it is a great resource for tutorial recommendations.

3: Look for tutorials that introduce you to the software as a whole.

4: Look for beginner tutorials for what you specifically want to do.

I’m familiar with Houdini, so as an example

1: Go to the Sidefx website(sidefx are the people that make Houdini) -Go to “Get” -Go to “Download” -Create an account (everything is completely free btw) -Click “Download” -You want the apprentice edition, so when it gives the option, check that box -Continue through the download process

2: Join r/Houdini and the discord (you’ll have to look around for it)

3: Ask the people in the subreddit or discord for introductory videos, also search Vimeo, YouTube, and the Sidefx website (Go under “Learn”, then search through the “Getting Started” and “Tutorials” section to find the videos on Sidefx)

4: Ask the people in the subreddit or discord for beginner videos on rigid body sims. (If you want to do water ask about flip sims)

Hey! Game dev here, you're looking for Unity. It uses JavaScript or C# for programming, you can import models and animations from any modelling package (I suggest Blender). If you need help getting started, I'm very willing to help.

I am not too familiar with blender but from reading this: https://www.blender.org/manual/physics/fluid/types/domain.html I would say yes. Try and get your sim to JUST fit in your available ram. A good rule of thumb for memory and 3d resolution is every time you double the resolution you increase your ram usage by about 8x. Use that to get a rough guess at how much your box can take before Blender crashes(and save often).

Not sure how being fake is a disqualifier... All simulations are fake.

And this is not a canned effect, it's an interactive simulation that at any point, you could add another star to the scene and start to heat the planet up.

Here's more info on our climate simulation.

We created Universe Sandbox ² in the Unity game engine. Using our own custom physics engine and completely custom graphical shaders. We've put at least 20 human years of effort into the sequel so far.

Have I missed something? I have set the Render Display to Final. Here's the file: https://mega.nz/#!ah42RSwA!QIELzYrxQlgcba1aCS_vEycnyoLV86bm7F5qS790GG0

edit: I just noticed I have subdivisions set to 0, that's probably the culprit

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jasmcole.wifisolver

https://jasmcole.com/

Upload a PNG of your floorplan following the color coded legend to pick various materials. These stills are all approximately 50 nanoseconds worth of simulated propagation. That's just about how long it took each to reach a steady state.

Top right image is the sim for where I actually have my router. The top right room is my kitchen. Living room is top left. Master bedroom bottom right. Materials in the sim are wood, concrete, and glass.

There's a nice little game on Android called Anti Stress, it has a mode where you can play with jelly cubes just like that. Not as shiny tho :/

Link

This simulation is part of my mobile game i'm currently developing,and includes the fact that eggs break with a collision.
For anyone who wants to try this game :
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AquaStudios.EggRun&hl=en

Formatting is hard on mobile? Use relay for reddit.

Play store link: Relay for reddit