Fabric Engine v1.0 released

[JPWestmas]

Man, that secondary muscle jiggle is super nice! Very exciting though I'm not sure just anybody would be able to use this. I guess that's not the point of FE 1.0 however.

[FabricPaul]

Good suggestion on linking to other viewpoints - however, we have changed things since that story i.e. what we're doing for 3D Animation is much more focused on PyQt now and much less about web technology. I'll find somewhere to link stories. I think industry specific pages will help - the problem with presenting generically is that nobody feels like we are speaking directly to them...

v1.0 is pretty low-level, but we're working on nice tools for rigging this stuff up. Phil is going to produce a series of blog posts on the rigging and animation system, so that should help people get their head around it.

[JPWestmas]

Excellent, I would love to see more of this rigging setup stuff, Very exciting!

[ActionArt]

This is REALLY interesting and I'm really looking forward to what gets developed with it.

I think it could use a different name for marketing purposes though, sounds a lot like a cloth sim ap at first glance which is far from reality.

[JPWestmas]

Yeah I think it should just be called "Squishy Engine".

[FabricPaul]

Ah, the curse of our name. We thought we were being clever - a Fabric is a weave of many threads, so a Fabric Engine is a machine that weaves many threads together We kind if disregarded the issues of using the words 'Fabric' and 'Engine' when selling software to 3D Entertainment people.

We will probably have different names for the industry-specific tools we build, so that should reduce the ambiguity.

[ActionArt]

Hopefully. Sometimes a name can really help or hinder marketing. Even something like "Thread Engine" or "Giga-Thread Engine" would be better IMO but that's just me. I suppose though that the type of people interested in this will find out about it anyway and not be tricked by the name.

I hope you've pitched Avid as well as they really need to improve their threading performance on products like Media Composer.

[FabricPaul]

This might cause some trouble

This video demonstrates a powerful new feature of the Fabric Engine Python Scene Graph - data libraries.

Together with data parsers such as Alembic and FBX data libraries provide a extremely fast way to load, represent and display 3D data.

We are in closed alpha and will move into beta soon. Please contact beta@fabricengine.com if you would like to participate.

Benchmarks:

3D Data:
2500 Objects
200 2048x2048 RGBA textures
~20.000.000 triangles

Loading times:
Autodesk Softimage: 4 minutes, 12 seconds
Autodesk Maya: 3 minutes, 17 seconds
FabricEnginePYSG: 19 seconds

Orbit performance with phong shading + all textures loaded:
Autodesk Softimage: 3fps
Autodesk Maya: 8fps
FabricEnginePYSG: 48 fps

[ActionArt]

Wow! I hope that can be put to use inside the SI viewport someday. Actually, I really wish I had that today...

[JPWestmas]

Ah, the curse of our name. We thought we were being clever - a Fabric is a weave of many threads, so a Fabric Engine is a machine that weaves many threads together We kind if disregarded the issues of using the words 'Fabric' and 'Engine' when selling software to 3D Entertainment people.

We will probably have different names for the industry-specific tools we build, so that should reduce the ambiguity.

Yes, I believe the name will grow on me when I get a better understanding of your market. I was able to look past the cloth dynamic picture that first came to mind. =)

[FabricPaul]

Hi guys - a little update on what we're up to with the PyQt stuff. This video made my day

This video shows an upcoming feature of the Fabric Engine Python SceneGraph: The SocketManager. Here is an early example of how we use Python sockets to allow Maya and Softimage to send live data to a Fabric application.



With the SocketManager you can send objects through network sockets, connect applications on the same machine, different machine on a local network or through the internet.

Fabric Engine PYSG is in beta. Please let us know if you would like to participate (beta@fabricengine.com).

p.s. I'll be cross-posting in a few places, so apologies if you already read this

[ace63]

There we have our HQ viewport

[Hirazi Blue]

Two WIP videos of current development over at the Fabric Engine.
Fabric Engine inside of Maya - WIP and Fabric Engine inside of Maya - Direct Rendering - WIP
Yes it's Maya...
Interesting stuff nonetheless, obviously.
;)

[curly]

Can you also do Kinect mocap inside the fabric engine. I saw Zoic studios presentation at FMX (in streaming) and they were looking to integrate a game engine and do realtime rendering on set. If it would integrate with a mocap system and a matchmoving camera we're almost there. Perhaps a build in realtime gpu chroma keyer and you have you're realtime rendering solution as the guys from Zoic mentioned. Or am I dreaming to much?

[FabricPaul]

Yes, Fabric could do all of those things (and does some of them already). It's designed to be customized and extended so things like video I/O and mocap data streaming are feasible - and since all of the code for Fabric is available to customers, they can write their own extensions etc if they like.

However, we're nowhere close to the real-time visual quality you see in Unreal Engine or CryEngine - we will keep pushing on this. Since we aren't building a game engine, we don't have to replicate the years/decade of work those guys have done to get to a similar visual quality. Having seen the recent UE4 article in Wired, it's clear we have a way to go

Right now we're working on performance and data interop as the main themes for v1.0, aiming to release at Siggraph - then we will be on a rolling release model, so people will see regular improvements and additions.

[Hirazi Blue]

Maya again (following the previous two WIPs):
Fabric Engine MAYA - Full Scene Rendering with GLSL

BUT:
On the German xsiforum.de Helge Mathee claims, something like this will be available for Softimage and C4D soon.
(Rough translation from here)
;)