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@arsh342 arsh342 released this 17 Oct 16:00
· 24 commits to main since this release
v1-beta.1
9de86d0

Blast FX v1 — Beta 1

This is a pre-release. First public beta of Blast FX, a modular Blender add-on for authoring physically based procedural cinematic explosions with Mantaflow.

Blast FX is a visual simulation system. It produces cinematic explosions; it is not an engineering model of real blasts, yields or damage.

Download

Asset Notes
blastfx_v1.zip Blender add-on package (56 files, ~56 KB)

Requirements

  • Blender 5.2+ (Mantaflow gas with adaptive domain)
  • Cycles recommended for rendering (renderer choice is a scene setting)

The add-on enforces one Blender unit = one metre. Scenes with other scale_length values are rejected at creation rather than mis-simulated.

Installation

  1. Download blastfx_v1.zip from the assets below.
  2. In Blender: Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Install... and select the zip.
  3. Enable Blast FX.
  4. Open the panel via 3D View > N > Blast FX.

The repository ships ready-made example scenes under examples/ (test_small, test_medium, test_large, test_large_event) — open one, press Bake Simulation, and render.

What's in the beta

The full core pipeline is in place — milestones 0 through 6 are complete:

  • Profiles, not magic numbers — deterministic ExplosionProfile data (source topology, combustion, buoyancy, turbulence, timing, camera framing) drives the sim; the nuclear_ground preset rides the LARGE profile.
  • Physically timed secondary FX — flash, shockwave geometry, camera impulse and dust derive their timing from the physical event timeline, not from independent keyframes.
  • Background bake worker — one non-blocking job at a time, atomic status, cancel-safe; incomplete generations are never reported as baked. Batch baking sequences jobs through the same one-at-a-time invariant.
  • Cache you can trust — state-hash identity covers envelope, profile, seed, FPS, gravity and units; stale or lying caches are detected and invalidated on file load, with automatic recovery of broken generations.
  • Quality tiers — Draft / Preview / Final change only numerical resolution, noise and solver quality, never the underlying event.
  • Scene safety — generated objects are tagged (blastfx_role / blastfx_id / blastfx_component) and every blast lives in its own removable collection.
  • Production tooling — rebuild, duplicate, batch generation with seed stepping, JSON preset save/load, validation warnings.

Validation status: automated physics validation passes 12/12 in Blender 5.2.1 (units, FPS-independence, scale behavior, quality-tier isolation), and the large-profile visual calibration round received sign-off.

Known limitations (beta)

  • Mantaflow is not an explosion solver — parameters are normalized/proxy controls; a parameter is called "physical" only when its unit, transformation and solver mapping are documented.
  • Particle-based debris — Geometry Nodes debris, Asset Browser integration, custom emitter collections, an Eevee adapter and a user-facing CLI are not in this release (Milestone 7, optional).
  • Blender 5.2 is the target — newer builds are untested; compatibility reports are welcome.
  • Caches are content-addressed and can be large; large-profile bakes at Final quality take a long time by design.

Feedback

Beta feedback is the point of this release: bug reports, Blender version compatibility reports (5.2 first, then newer builds), and headless/CLI workflow notes are all useful. See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md for the dev loop and test matrix.

License

Blast FX is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL-3.0 or later — see LICENSE.txt.

Assets 3
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