NAIAD Alternatives

NAIAD

Naiad is a dynamics solver and a simulation framework capable of producing animations of dynamic bodies including:

* liquids
o large and small bodies of water
o breaking waves
o splashes and foam
o accurate viscous liquids featuring buckling, coiling and bending motion
o high degree of creative control while preserving realistic fluid motion
* gases
o fire
o smoke
o explosions
* full two-way coupling of rigid-bodies to fluids

Naiad is more than just a software package, it is:

* a description of a simulation expressed as a graph: the Naiad Graph
* an interface specification used to construct a Naiad Graph: the Naiad Interface
* a plug-in API allowing users to write custom nodes in the Naiad Graph
* a software package which conforms to the Naiad Interface and runs the simulation described by a Naiad Graph
* an open-source software package allowing an artist to interactively construct a Naiad Graph using a 3D GUI front-end
* a standard file-format for storing the results of a Naiad simulation, called the EMP format.

We will now give a brief overview of these components.