www.si-community.com

Howdy people,

Hope everybody is doing fine!

I am very pleased to announce the release of emPolygonizer5 (version 5.1)
Aside from new features and many improvements this new version is not only available for Softimage, but also for Maya, MODO, Fabric Engine and as a command line tool..
=> pick your poison!

I am aware that this is a Softimage community and you guys know that I am myself a 100% XSI fan, but things changed a little when what's-the-name-of-that-company-again decided to end Softimage. So the plan - as far as Mootzoid is concerned - is to continue releasing stuff for Softimage, but also to provide versions of the same plugin for other packages.

A release video was also made for the occasion. It contains four minutes of diverse meshed particle simulations.



The particle simulations were made with Softimage ICE & Lagoa, Houdini and with Proteus. Latter is a new SPH solver that is being developed by some amazing brains of the Computer Graphics Department of Freiburg University in Germany. In case you are interested in knowing more about Proteus and the team behind it, please check the links in the post scriptum.

Voilà, that's all for now.
Very much hope this new version will prove itself a valuable companion in production, regardless of what 3D app you are using. That being said... I hope it is Softimage|XSI ;)

Cheers,
Eric


Visit the emPolygonizer5 web page for more information.
To order or upgrade the plugin please visit the Mootzoid Order web page.








PS (Proteus):

Computer Graphics Department of Freiburg University

52-Technology (Project Proteus)

a few more pix from the video

Congrats.

I tried to find what's new but i didn't find it.

PS: Nice fluid sims. But i am a afraid any non integral simulation will have not much future in 3-5 years.

All images a stunning to say the least, but unlike EM|Fluids, they are all very stylised.

I think/find that what EM|Polygonizer needs is at least one excellent demo and/or sample scene of this kind


(perhaps with SPH?)

@Bullit: still working on the documentation and stuff, sorry. A list of the new features will be available soon in the online doc and on the emPolygonizer5 web page.
Here a brief "what's new" list:

• new multithreaded mesher core.
• very low memory consumption.
• liquid shaper (a.k.a. PCA "Principal Component Analysis")
• denoise positions.
• new normal vector algorithm for flicker free results.
• can mesh dozenzs of millions of particles (note: I managed to mesh 107 million particle cache file on my 8 Gig RAM laptop).

@FXDude: you are absolutely right. I will make such a video soon as well as a video showing some extreme slow motion stuff. Latter is now finally possible without flickering thanks to the new way how normal are generated.

Nice fluid sims. But i am a afraid any non integral simulation will have not much future in 3-5 years.

Hey Bullit, what exactly do you mean with "non integral simulation"? Got any examples (links, papers, wikipedia, ...)?

Mootzoid wrote: Latter is now finally possible without flickering thanks to the new way how normal are generated.

EXACTLY! what I was going to say lol!
Apart from awesome (and exceptional) SPH simulation speed,
Flickering was/is one of the noticable drawbacks,

BUT in combination with awesome (and exceptional) new mesher features ;) ......

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite positive that with the new particle shaper, that this sort of "sheeting" https://vimeo.com/28440243

... would require considerably less particle resolution to acheive (?)


All of which I think should cut simulation time (3 days(!) for this wine glass) to a mere fraction.

And having this kind of example I think would show a major advantage of having this feature compared to pretty-much anything else out there(!)

Nevertheless, Congrats!

Mootzoid wrote:

Nice fluid sims. But i am a afraid any non integral simulation will have not much future in 3-5 years.

Hey Bullit, what exactly do you mean with "non integral simulation"? Got any examples (links, papers, wikipedia, ...)?

I mean, doing only a fluid simulation is something that already exists, it can done better, and the video is very good, but will be enough to make people adopt it? With Nvidia currently trying to build a comprehensive simulation environment: fluids, particles, soft bodies, cloth, and other developments.
So i don't think just one subset of simulation have a future.

Well if it would ever be going through tough(er) times, I'd hardly think it would be about performance or 'quality' issues (...)

And it now also being for other platforms I imagine would be to avoid just that.

But you know.. Filaments and a host of different (and unique) things, including the new shaping/antiflicker stuff, .. and the parameter layouts (and ICE node interface(SI) ) and other usability pros..

which makes it well.. like Softimage.. one of the best (secret) things, with anything being a project away from making the most stunning and/or realistic thing you've ever seen :]

In this case, I think it's a question of giving a go at discovering a (or a few) good recipie(s).

Not sure what was used here, but I know it was mostly soft. (from TheShed)

little update:

• Linux versions of emPolygonizer5 are now available for Softimage and as a command line tool.
• A first video tutorial is available, just a walk through the new stuff (see below)

Cheers!
Eric