ICE 2 Max Advice

JPWestmas · Post by **JPWestmas** » 22 Mar 2012, 20:09

I'm pretty new to complex particles and dynamics and I absolutely adore Softimage for other things. I'm thinking that I want to use ICE particles with max to render because most people I work with use Max and not softimage for rendering. Now there appears to be a lot of Max plugins for particle and dynamics effects tools: PFlow ToolBox 1,2,3, Krackatoa, Rayfire, PheonixFD. These plugins are crazy expensive!

I mean why not just use ICE with max right? I'm wondering if there is anybody out there who would agree with me on that and what their experiences are. I mean I would save money right away and I'm already feeling comfortable with the ICE interface.

origin · Post by **origin** » 22 Mar 2012, 20:24

i'm moving some of the ice stuff to krakatoa right now, thru S. Carons .prt custom cache.
Its working okay only drawback is that krakatoas files with millions of points eats terabytes of hdd space even for simple things.
But if you don't own Krakatoa you won't really be able to render particles inside max...
for SI there are fury/em plugs and free 3delight which for my surprise renders millions of particles really fast.

JPWestmas · Post by **JPWestmas** » 22 Mar 2012, 20:44

oh ok, that's a bummer about the ICE 2 Max particles thing. I don't really want to spend a 1000 bucks on a license for Krakatoa.

I've been using an old copy of XSI 6 for a while now so I'm kinda behind on things. So I would do all my rendering in SI based on what I've seen in the trial, except I don't have a clue on what is really supported by Vray and 3Delight. I mean they say fully integrated but I find that somewhat hard to believe especially when it comes to new stuff that is in ICE and I do need to do complex character rendering that includes dynamics and particles. Looking at any of the Rayfire, or PFlow Toolbox videos would give you an idea for my primary needs, just on a smaller scale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFOJO4XwO9A

Thanks for your help in helping me decide!

luceric · Post by **luceric** » 22 Mar 2012, 21:08

If you have 3dsmax 2012 and softimage 2012, you can use the Sent To function to send ICE particles to 3DSMax for rendering.

This was achieved by implementing nCache support in Max's Birth File operator
http://download.autodesk.com/us/3dsmax/ ... E4-862.htm

JPWestmas · Post by **JPWestmas** » 22 Mar 2012, 21:30

Ah right, I saw this particle "send to maya" thing work but I didn't know it worked in Max also. I wonder if the cache files are bigger because of this or if they are the same size as any typical caching scenario in SI. I'll give that a go.

Thanks!

scaron · Post by **scaron** » 23 Mar 2012, 19:05

i just wanted to mention that my prt plugin isn't really developed anymore and lacks support for custom attributes. greogory's plugin is better in my opinion!

http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=29;action=display;threadid=43535;start=0#msg275546

https://vimeo.com/15640804

ICE 2 Max Advice

ICE 2 Max Advice

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Re: ICE 2 Max Advice