FLIP Fluids Addon vs Blender Mantaflow
The FLIP Fluids addon and Mantaflow are both FLIP-based simulators. Mantaflow is the new fluid simulation system that was introduced into Blender 2.82. FLIP is the name of a simulation technique that is popular for simulating fluids and is also found in many other professional liquid simulation tools. FLIP stands for FLuid Implicit Particle.
Although Mantaflow and the FLIP Fluids addon both use the FLIP simulation technique, they are very different in what features are available, how features were implemented, and how the projects are developed. Mantaflow is a simulation tool for creating both liquid and gaseous/smoke simulation effects. Our FLIP Fluids project focuses strictly on liquid fluid simulation and we put a large development effort into reliability, stability, learning resources, and workflow features to help you create beautiful liquid simulation effects as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
The short answer is Yes! At the time of this writing (2021), it has now been one year since Mantaflow has been added as the default fluid simulation system in Blender 2.82. Since then, our FLIP Fluids addon has continued to be a popular alternative to the Mantaflow simulator and has only grown in popularity.
Over the past year since the official release, Blender Mantaflow has come a long way in improvements, adding bug fixes and impressive new features. Our FLIP Fluids addon has also continued to improve and stay as a competitive alternative - and thanks to the amazing support from the Blender Community and funding via sales, we're still able to keep up development on a daily basis.
Many of the aspects described in the topic below are still relevant reasons why our FLIP Fluids addon remains one of the Blender Market's best selling products and a popular choice as a liquid simulation tool for Blender.
Update: The most recent weekly report from the Mantaflow maintainer was posted in September 2021 (view report here). According to a Blender developer, the Mantaflow fluid simulator currently has no active developer and current bugs will be marked as Known Issues (developer comment here | known issues here).
What are the benefits to your FLIP Fluids addon, compared to Blender's new built in Mantaflow solver?
Paraphrased from this Twitter thread (February 15, 2020).
Most commonly mentioned by our users is that we are further developed for stability and usability compared to Mantaflow. It's been over 2 years since we began the FLIP Fluids beta. I think a large contributor to our success was that we released a very polished product that was stable and just seemed to 'work'.
Since release, funding through market sales has allowed us continue development full time for the last 20 months. It's these thousands of hours of continued development that has furthered the usability, optimization, stability, and expanded features.
Usability: A large focus of our development is in usability and workflow features. Providing tools to help artists create simulation effects quickly and painlessly. Recently we have re-designed our product page to better highlight our usability features: https://blendermarket.com/products/flipfluids
Stability: Our fluid engine rarely ever crashes during simulation. Our beta testers really stressed our engine, putting it into situations we had never expected. Stability has been mentioned frequently as something that helps our users to run complex and long running simulations.
Customer Support: Another large focus for us is providing responsive support Monday - Friday. We have maintained a 5 star rating on the Blender Market and many reviews mention our helpful support. Communication with our users is very important for us to help improve our addon.
Documentation: Upon release, our documentation was a bit sparse. Over time, through support and feedback, we were able to better understand our users' needs. Adding and improving on many topics, filling out our settings/UI docs with helpful notes and tips on common issues.
FLIP Fluids and Mantaflow are both simulation tools that use the FLIP sim method. There will be strengths/weaknesses for both software solutions. Mantaflow is a huge improvement for Blender's fluidsim tools and is attracting many new users to Blender for simulation effects.
Mantaflow has only recently been officially released in Blender. There is room for improvement in usability and stability at the moment, but it's great to know that the Blender Foundation is funding further development of the integration to improve and expand on the simulator.
Mantaflow is funded and developed by the Blender Foundation. The FLIP Fluids addon is developed by a small team independent of Blender and funded by sales though official marketplaces where the FLIP Fluids addon is sold. Thanks to the generous amount of support from the Blender community, we have been able to continue development and improve our product on a full-time basis since the initial release in May 2018!
For more information on how the FLIP Fluids addon is developed and funded, see this comment.