Two Spanish engineers created the product RealFlow: the first software specifically designed to bring special effects involving liquids to film. It can produce lava flowing from a volcano, a giant wave, a tsunami or a flood.
A real tsunami is not like what we see in the movies. Simulation allows filmmakers to reproduce reality and, in theory, is without limits. We could even call it the ‘Hollywood effect’. RealFlow, from Next Limit Technologies, is the first software that has been designed in order to add special effects related with liquids to the big screen.
This Spanish software is a leader in the market for special effects. It’s a kind of Photoshop for fluids that’s been used in over one hundred films and ads. It even led the two engineers behind it to the famous Industrial Light & Magic company in California, founded by George Lucas.
In 2008 the firm won an Oscar for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the US. Among its 15,000 clients are Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks from the film industry, in addition to NASA, BMW, Apple and Toyota for engineering.
For example, this system was used to create the lava on Mount Doom, where Frodo let go of the heavy burden he had been carrying in The Lord of the Rings; the chocolate that Willy Wonka produced in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; the waves crashing between the fleets of the Lancasters and King Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones; the pitiless tsunami in The Impossible; or the X-Men.
Following upon the success of RealFlow other programs were also launched that aimed beyond the artistic world of film to sectors involved in engineering: Maxwell Render in 2005 and XFlow in 2011. The former is a light simulator allowing users to create photographic images that are practically indistinguishable from reality (rendering).
XFlow is a 3D wind tunnel that also simulates fluids, but for the worlds of automobiles, aeronautics and civil engineering. The goal of this product is to let companies understand how a car or plane will perform in a real world situation before they have been manufactured. Users can design prototypes in 3D and simulate their performance in the 3D wind tunnel.