aaOcean + ICE vs Bifrost or Realflow?

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blondimage
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Joined: 20 Mar 2012, 17:38

aaOcean + ICE vs Bifrost or Realflow?

Post by blondimage » 31 Jul 2014, 19:58

Hi
This being my first post on this site hopefully I won't be totally ignored! :D

Where I'm working we're needing to get into oceans, boats and helicopter realistic environments. We currently mainly using 3ds Max + VRay, although I've had previous with Softimage but no real ICE exposure, so to some extent I'm wanting to lean towards Soft for our needs. However, both Realflow and Maya/Bifrost seem to have immediate solutions but I can't help but feel there will be a fair learning curve to get good results and that they're a bit overkill for our needs (training materials and scenarios).

So, does anybody have a opinion on what would be the best course to take and the workflow they'd recommend?

I appreciate Soft is EOL but I can't help but feel it has so much potential as it currently is with existing plugins that it can and will still hold it's own against Maya and the like.

Clinton

ps. sorry signing off now as cleaners kicking me out!

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Mathaeus
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Re: aaOcean + ICE vs Bifrost or Realflow?

Post by Mathaeus » 31 Jul 2014, 21:00

Well these are pretty much different things, aaOcean is implementation of Tessendorf waves function, that is, more a procedural approach. Method is closer to old Maya Ocean. The last two you mentioned, they are simulators, even I think RealFlow has a lot of trickery for mixing the simulation, with procedural generation.
In short, if you want a large surface and fast generation, but no that much of believable interaction with other objects, you want something along line of aaOcean. For smaller piece of water surface and nice detailed interaction, and simulation time is not problem, you want dedicated simulator, Bifrost or Realflow.

blondimage
Posts: 4
Joined: 20 Mar 2012, 17:38

Re: aaOcean + ICE vs Bifrost or Realflow?

Post by blondimage » 01 Aug 2014, 12:19

Thanks for the prompt reply Mathaeus.

Yep, appreciate what you're saying. We looked at Maya's ocean but it looked overly converluted compared to aaOcean or even xOcean .
Initially what we're after is ocean; floating objects; water displacement/wake; particles/spray.

The scale will vary from mid far out to mid close in.

In time is to have more interaction with the ocean with collisions, helicopter downdraft. With a Soft option there's lagoa/slipstream+fury/emfluid+emPolygonizer/physX - I'm guessing with two of them being gpu accelerated for the simulations they compare well with current Bifrost and Realflow.(?) .

This is an area I'm fairly new to, so just trying to guage the best approach with the right tools. So if anyone wants to share their workflow would be much appreciated. ;;)

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