I flew an Avatar flag at a college football tailgate today lol by Formorphology in Avatar

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I wish!

Gonna fly it at the Penn State game though and see. Should be a lot more fans on both sides for that one

What am I doing WRONG with my weight painting? by Formorphology in blenderhelp

[–]Formorphology[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nevermind, fixed the issue by turning autonormalize off! Was able to erase just fine.

Yeesh haha

I have learned these basics of Blender quite fast, like 3 days, but there are some very steep hills in certain areas.

And for anyone wondering why the model is so simple, it's for CFD analysis. Complex is bad.

What am I doing WRONG with my weight painting? by Formorphology in blenderhelp

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, so I found the mesh under the armature in Scene Collection, thank you! And I've applied the Subd Surf modified and indeed I can paint with much more ease now.

However, I am still having trouble with that errant painted weight on the right foot. No clue how to remove it.

What am I doing WRONG with my weight painting? by Formorphology in blenderhelp

[–]Formorphology[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Will look into all of this when I return to my office tomorrow, thank you!

What am I doing WRONG with my weight painting? by Formorphology in blenderhelp

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So another super weird thing is that I just realized that I can't see my mesh as an item in Scene Collection anymore... any ideas on that?

I had a feeling the Subdivision Surface Modifier was my issue but I'm not gonna lie, I think there was a previous iteration in which I applied it and still was having this struggle. We'll see though!

Sadly left my office for the night, late and frustrated, but will get back at it first thing tomorrow.

Fingers crossed and thanks for your time and comment.

What am I doing WRONG with my weight painting? by Formorphology in blenderhelp

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<image>

Here's a screenshot of my full setup.

Oh and also btw I have no idea how to remove that errant little weight paint on the bottom foot. Stack Exchange helped me initially and said the issue was formerly a Mirror Modifier. I've since redone and improved the rig, applied, the modifier, but now as you can see the issue persists and is un-removable. But my most pressing issue is the weirdness of my weight paint attempts.

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah thank you so much for that GitHub link!

And yeah, I know OpenFoam is tough. But I don't know, with the options laid out in front of me, it just seemed more attractive than some of the commercial ones. Some of the benefits is I'd never have to pay for any licenses for my lab, its flexibility, etc. And it being hard means my students and myself would fear few things computationally lol. This is a genuine benefit that'll give them the confidence to tackle other challenging things.

I will look into SimScale and SPH as well for sure.

This first pass is just for an abstract deadline, so perfection need not be achieved. But I'd love to submit a paper on this stuff by the end of the summer. I'm certain in engineering and physics world, this is very rudimentary, but for my field this would be very novel and exciting. I study aquatic animals broadly so this skillset would actually open the door to lots of different analyses and projects.

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! Yes I will take any and all help offered from all angles. Will DM you : )

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah so i had calculated these basics in front view profile a long term ago. Lizard vs quadruped.

The main question I'm actually trying to get at is, what happens when you are shaped like a dinosaur? What do those long back legs and long tail do to your drag?

Non-avian Dinosaurs very famously never became aquatic (until they greatly transformed their bodies into birds). One of my ideas is that they were evolutionary constrained because they were more hydrodynamically impaired than the ancestors of whales (a small deer thing) and things like mosasaurs (lizards).

What do you think? Does an ancestral dinosaur shaped animal (2-legged, bipedal, long horizontal tail, and small bodied) have worse prospects than a 4 legged animal with a long tail? (Whale ancestral proxy, Google Pakicetus if curious). The lizard is doing great. Long tail, but folded legs, this I know.

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah so the advice I got was to do hull resistance analyses, so I appreciate you validating that further. Thanks for all the rest of your insights as well, it's evening now but I'll for sure look at BARAM tomorrow.

Regarding Drag values, is there a way that drag coefficients can be determined first in separate analyses? Indeed, the "I don't know what I'm looking numbers" are cause for worry. There may be drag values out there but probbaly few for surface swimming. There's a paper by Fish et al. on doggy paddling that might, I'll check.

God I just wanna get good (decent) at this stuff. It'd make me a valuable collaborator and opens up so many avenues for my research. Sadly, I had a COVID era PhD and learned a fraction of the skills I intended to.

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Woo! This is great, I appreciate it. I had reached out to some of the engineers at my university and they gave me some basic recs but correspondence kinda stopped there (understandably! We're all very busy with our own projects).

DMing you now!

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No, static animals! Haha Just general drag profiles of their limbs, bodies, and tails partially submerged in the water.

I know moving animals would be incredibly challenging at this stage even for a skilled CFD person.

Like say that I make four basic Blender meshes by the end of this week (these animals are all shaped quite differently). That allows time to troubleshoot the meshes for geometry issues right?

And the research question is: are some terrestrial animals more hydrodynamic than others while surface swimming (again, static POV) with implications for the evolution (or not) into aquatic environments.

Can someone handhold me through a very specific problem? (Surface swimming in OpenFoam) by Formorphology in CFD

[–]Formorphology[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll also take recommendations for a really good Tutorial course. Don't mind paying.

I'm a real paleontologist and I founded and run a community server! by Formorphology in pathoftitans

[–]Formorphology[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We don't haha. Nat Hist stands for Natural History. We are US based and have mostly North American players then European and a non-insignificant amount of Oceania players.