Shape Flow

Shape Flow is a wind tunnel. Lanes of tracer particles stream past a shape that is never drawn, so you only see it by the way the flow bends around it: the streams part at the front, speed round the sides and close behind it, where small eddies curl them up.

How it works

The air is modelled as a smooth flow that never passes through the shape and never bunches up, so the streams wrap the surface cleanly. Colour comes straight from pressure: where the air slows against the nose it takes the base colour, where it rushes round the shoulders it takes the fast colour, and the very fastest flow turns white.

Settings

• Shape tab: the obstacle, from a sphere or capsule to a box, a torus or a polyhedron.
• Flow Speed and Wind Pitch: the wind, and the angle it meets the shape at.
• Rake: where the streams are released, as a ring round the body (Stream tube), one vertical sheet (Smoke sheet) or a Cross.
• Lanes: how many streams.
• Turbulence: the strength of the eddies in the wake.
• Color and Fast Color: high and low pressure.

The cursor can be a second obstacle the streams part around, a jet that pushes them along its motion, or a vortex they wrap around.

Use it for

Product and automotive scenes, sports and aero brands, engineering and science explainers. Related: Shape Burst and the Flow Net Grid.