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Welcome to the FLIP Fluids Wiki! Here you will find user documentation for how to use the FLIP Fluids addon for Blender.

What is FLIP Fluids?

FLIP Fluids is a powerful liquid simulation plugin that gives you the ability to create high quality fluid effects all within Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite. Created by Ryan Guy and Dennis Fassbaender (Check out our interview with the Blender Market!).

The core fluid engine, a modern FLIP-based fluid solver, has been under development for over four years with over two years of development focused on tightly integrating the simulator into Blender as an addon. Thanks to the amazing support of the Blender community, we have been able to further develop the addon on a full-time basis for over a year!

The FLIP Fluids simulator was created to improve on many aspects of Blender's internal Elbeem fluid simulation system such as speed, performance, accuracy, customizability, and user experience. We use a familiar and intuitive simulation workflow, so if you have experience with the internal fluid simulator or other fluid simulation software, you will be able to get yourself up and running with FLIP Fluids in no time!

User Documentation

The Most Important Documentation Topics

Don't know where to start in the wiki? Here is a collection of our most recommended topics to help you learn how to use the FLIP Fluids simulator effectively.


How large should I make my domain object?	A domain that fits as tight as possible around your fluid effect maximizes detail and performance.
Why is manifold geometry important?	For objects to work correctly within the simulator, their geometry must be manifold/closed/watertight.
The Importance of Scale	Setting an appropriate scale will ensure that your fluid moves at realistic speeds and can make the difference between simulating a small mug of coffee and a large section of a beach.
Containing Fluid Inside of an Object	Easily contain fluid inside of an object using our Obstacle Inverse Workflow.
Simulation baking is taking too long to compute!	Tips for optimizing your simulation set up to improve performance.
How to debug problems with obstacles	The first tip in this article/video will teach you how the FLIP Fluids debugging tools can be used to diagnose issues with your obstacle objects.
What are substeps?	Fluid simulations are calculated by taking small steps through time. The smaller the timestep, the more accurate the simulation. Sometimes multiple substeps/timesteps during a frame are needed.
What is the PIC/FLIP Ratio?	Take a look at the documentation for the PIC/FLIP Ratio, an interesting setting that has applications in faking viscosity and dampening fluid motion.
What does the Inflow Constrain Fluid Velocity option do?	A powerful Inflow option that has applications in slowing down inflow emission, pushing around fluid when submerged, or filling up a tank when submerged.
How to export to Alembic (.abc) for render farms	Not all render farms support the FLIP Fluids addon. Here is how to export the FLIP Fluids simulation to the Alembic format for use on render farms.
Rendering from the Command Line	Are you rendering a huge simulation? Rendering from the command line is the quickest and most stable way to render massive animations in Blender, and it's easier than you may think!