Particles Effects with Entertainment Creation Suite Video?

[scaron]

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searc ... t$20issues

I think these are too many/much issues. Some of that people asking are veterans.

i looked through some of the threads you linked (some which i participated in and many are not relevant) and i think they actually all stem from a lack of understanding, not entirely of ICE but of what how the data is organized, and a number of times they are resolved. you are asking for compounds/nodes which do the conversions but they already exist! if you have an array of values per particle but want to set data on a single value per particle you use array nodes, min, max, average, etc. they output a single value per particle. if you want to choose a specific value and discard the rest you use 'select in array'. if you want to convert between components on meshes you use the numerous attributes available. for example 'VertexToPolygon'...

ICE actually is making something very difficult, much easier than ever before. can it be tricky? absolutely. is it blocked or limited in some ways? you betcha. but there are many places to go to ask questions and many people willing to answer them. but YOU have to choose to do so and move past the fear of it being too difficult.

[Pooby]

Exactly my observations too.
People not understanding is not the same as a program having issues.
Issues implies something broken or badly designed.
There will always be people who are on their way to understanding who have to ask questions, but it is a logic misstep to assume that because they seem to have issues, and they may be people who are ' veterans' then the issue must be with the software they use.
it also can be misleading as to the scale of the 'problem', to gather all the questions ever asked, as into give the impression that everyone is having real difficulty.

I would be so bold as to say that I now have a pretty comprehensive knowledge of ICE' context and I know initially where I found it hard to get my head around. But I know that the system they designed is not at fault. The issues were with me, Not ICE.

[Hirazi Blue]

Badly documented maybe?
(And by "badly" I mean that there might be room for improvement.)

[origin]

I think there was similiar discussion some time ago...involving maths, rockets science and ICE.
Then devs added this topmenu called ICE with preset compounds so it was a matter of few clicks to emulate old particles (i think... i never used it)

[luceric]

ICE is definitely designed with a programmer approach - it's c++ templates in a graph. Phil (a former character animator) was tasked with figuring out how to create a particle system on top of what was an already decided system. it doesn't have the concept of events and state machines, and those things had to be made on top. There is no particle system, whether it's pflow, nparticles or ICE, that is either "crap" or flawless, they all have pluses and minuses. Once of ICE's plus is granularity. There was always hope to make another artist UI layer on top, eventually that became that menu that chinny+guillaume made, which Mark demoes in the webinar here.

[MauricioPC]

ICE is definitely designed with a programmer approach - it's c++ templates in a graph. Phil (a former character animator) was tasked with figuring out how to create a particle system on top of what was an already decided system. it doesn't have the concept of events and state machines, and those things had to be made on top. There is no particle system, whether it's pflow, nparticles or ICE, that is either "crap" or flawless, they all have pluses and minuses. Once of ICE's plus is granularity. There was always hope to make another artist UI layer on top, eventually that became that menu that chinny+guillaume made, which Mark demoes in the webinar here.

Luc-Eric, would you say that ICE is the most 'powerful' dynamics system of the three or nParticles still tops ICE for it's scalability? From what people say, PFlow is more 'limited' in the programming side of things.

As for dynamics simulation ... could ICE rival Thinking Particles (never used)?

[Bellsey]

the thing with these types of particles systems is that there are many different types of users, some want to get down and dirty with it and go deep, others just want the power but with loads of presets that they can simple alter. And then there's alot of people who somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

Personally, (I'm not big Max fan at all) I find PFlow abit old and clunky, and I don't see anything there that I perhaps can't already do with ICE. However, can it be somewhat easier to create and control some things with PFlow? Definitely and it does have some amount of artist control that I wish ICE had at times. But Max has always been good at making some things easy to control within it's UI.

I get what people are saying about the contexts of ICE and how it works, and that's the best way to understand it. However there are alot of people who find that too technical and frankly scary, even though some would argue that these types of systems require a certain level of understanding. But many don't want to really think and worry about that stuff, they just want the system to work. And PFlow kinda doesn't do a bad job of that, from what I can see.

As for Maya's nParticles/Dynamics systems. I think I might have posted my thoughts before, but I sometimes struggle to get on with it. The tech is very powerful, but I do find it often clumsy to use. I can get going far more easily and quickly with ICE.
But I guess it comes down to what people get used to.

On the subject of the video itself, this was part of a webinar series that we run every month (I think). They are hosted live, but the section that involves showing he product is pre-recoded and then 'broadcast' on the Adobe Connect system that we use. During the webinar, people can then post questions and comments as it goes and we try and answer live as well. The video section of the webinar is then posted to YouTube a short period after the webinar.

As for the marketing and notification of these webinars, someone mentioned they knew nothing about them, but information is posted to the various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, on a regular basis leading up to the webinar. This is often the best way to spread the word to as many people as possible.
Information is also sent out to the channel, so they can often use their own communications.

[MauricioPC]

the thing with these types of particles systems is that there are many different types of users, some want to get down and dirty with it and go deep, others just want the power but with loads of presets that they can simple alter. And then there's alot of people who somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

Personally, (I'm not big Max fan at all) I find PFlow abit old and clunky, and I don't see anything there that I perhaps can't already do with ICE. However, can it be somewhat easier to create and control some things with PFlow? Definitely and it does have some amount of artist control that I wish ICE had at times. But Max has always been good at making some things easy to control within it's UI.

I get what people are saying about the contexts of ICE and how it works, and that's the best way to understand it. However there are alot of people who find that too technical and frankly scary, even though some would argue that these types of systems require a certain level of understanding. But many don't want to really think and worry about that stuff, they just want the system to work. And PFlow kinda doesn't do a bad job of that, from what I can see.

As for Maya's nParticles/Dynamics systems. I think I might have posted my thoughts before, but I sometimes struggle to get on with it. The tech is very powerful, but I do find it often clumsy to use. I can get going far more easily and quickly with ICE.
But I guess it comes down to what people get used to.

On the subject of the video itself, this was part of a webinar series that we run every month (I think). They are hosted live, but the section that involves showing he product is pre-recoded and then 'broadcast' on the Adobe Connect system that we use. During the webinar, people can then post questions and comments as it goes and we try and answer live as well. The video section of the webinar is then posted to YouTube a short period after the webinar.

As for the marketing and notification of these webinars, someone mentioned they knew nothing about them, but information is posted to the various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, on a regular basis leading up to the webinar. This is often the best way to spread the word to as many people as possible.
Information is also sent out to the channel, so they can often use their own communications.

Okay ... I was one that didn't know about the existence of the webinar. I just checked at the Softimage Facebook page and it's announced there, on the 12th of November. So I guess I've must missed that. Sorry.

As for the particles, thanks for the reply. I'm learning Maya with Dynamics in mind, so I guess I'll focus more on Softimage ICE now and interchange between it and Maya to get the job done faster. In any way, I liked what I saw from ICE.

I was always unsure of making Softimage my main app, but today I don't really care. I like Softimage the most and I'll study it as the go to app with Maya as a sidekick for particles/simulation and destruction.