BSnow Dev Log

Work focused on cutting down the constant back-and-forth of data between the simulation engine and Blender, aiming for a single clean pass instead of repeated round-trips so the workflow stays responsive. The way the scene is scanned to detect what needs simulating was also improved for better accuracy.

Effort went into making the snow simulation perfectly repeatable, so an identical setup always produces the exact same result — essential for reliable animation. A caching system shared with the Phenix project was wired in so previously computed frames can be reused instead of recalculated from scratch. The remainder of the day was spent diagnosing and ironing out small inconsistencies in the output.

The snow engine was restructured so it now controls the entire life of every snow particle from birth to melt, while Blender simply supplies the artistic settings and displays the result. The whole simulation was moved onto a new memory-light grid that concentrates computing power only where snow actually exists, a change delivered and validated at roughly 80 percent. An older, heavier surface-building method was retired in favour of this leaner approach, alongside a broad round of cleanup and reorganization.

Completed migration to Blender 4.2.0 stable release. Delivered production-ready addon with full feature parity, optimized memory handling, and stable physics simulation pipeline.

Updated addon codebase for Blender 4.0+ API changes, ensuring compatibility with latest Blender architecture while maintaining backward compatibility.

Implemented robust boundary flag system for domain edge handling and proper GPU device enumeration with per-scene GPU selection UI for multi-GPU systems.

Refactored GPU memory management using spatial chunking system with multi-threaded Rayon-based empty chunk detection. Enabled larger-scale simulations through lazy initialization and dynamic allocation.

Refactored addon to use Blender’s native particle system rather than custom handling. Improved platform detection for cross-OS compatibility and stabilized particle upload/download.

Developed PyO3-based Python extension module for direct Blender Python access to the Rust simulation engine. Clean API for fluid parameters, grid resolution, and boundary conditions.

Solved cross-platform compilation issues by removing Kiss3D dependency. Implemented automated release tooling with platform-specific artifact packaging for Windows and macOS.

Built persistent cache system for storing simulation results to disk using Alembic (.abc) format. Refined UI with batch domain processing and UUID-based unique naming scheme.

Implemented dual GPU/CPU computation paths, integrated signed distance field (SDF) sampling for accurate geometry representation, and developed particle emission from Blender emitter objects.

Built complete Python-Rust bridge using socket communication protocol. Implemented comprehensive Blender UI with property panels, domain configuration, and particle emitter controls.

Established core GPU compute pipeline using WGPU, implementing CFD algorithms including advection, diffusion, and boundary conditions. Achieved stable particle-based snow physics with shader-driven acceleration.