An asteroid belt in 5 minutes

[Bullit]

By Manny



More examples here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... hV2qSB63Bw

[csaez]

Those requirements are ridiculous IMHO.
It's understandable they can't add support for new type of data in their pipeline, but you can always bake the end result before the export and still enjoy of 'modern'/better-suited tools for the job. Seems like Matt is asking for someone to guess his workaround instead of really welcoming feedback and being open to new ideas.

But hey, that's just my opinion and I'm probably wrong.

[Mathaeus]

I'm big fan of Matt's posts, because of his somewhat unique, opposition attitude.
However, entire story reminds me (of course it's just me...) to somehow traditional game development, with 'everything in house' approach. Basically it has two phases. First phase, when programmer is walking around, showing the fancy technical papers, trying to explain why in-house tool is needed. Second phase is implementation, when everyone else is walking around, showing the new fancy technical papers, which can not be implemented anymore, because all programmer's time is spent to maintenance of already implemented tools.
Today with these publicity available tools, provided by big players, don't believe anyone (except other big players) will start in game business, with too much of in-house things.

Another questionable thing is 'easy to use', where the constraint to nurbs is assumed as 'easy to setup', but ICE tree is not. Afaik, once the pleasing of laziness starts, both are hard to figure out.

Again, it's just me....

[Hirazi Blue]

The challenge itself is interesting, but the following posts about the limitations of the challenge and of ICE are priceless and well worth the read.
;)

[Mathaeus]

The challenge itself is interesting, but the following posts about the limitations of the challenge and of ICE are priceless and well worth the read.
;)

imho, main problem, and BIG problem, is lack of enough good 'direct' connection between SI and game engine. Something that works with another AD app (again forgot the name, I think it's 'Popocatepetl' or like). But, I heard there will be the next gen ICE in this app, so no problems at all.
Limitation in creating meshes, kinematics. Well everything has limitation, for example, I don't believe if there any custom hair system created in Hooudini, exclusive by factory nodes ( except some fur here and there). After all, we all know for these limitation, but, imho, it's unique for Softimage internet community, to ride and ride on worst or brightest side, hardly anything in between. Yet another reason to give the ICE thing to Maya people, who are able to utilize it so much better (yes I hate to say that...).

[angus_davidson]

That is the main issue. The bridge between the game engine and the creation app has always been the weak point in many workflows. Part of this is both creation tools and game engines change over time so its very tricky to get something that is both backward compatible and future proof.

Another part of the problem is that you tend to end up creating and maintaining many custom tools on both game engine and creation tools. Over time this can get get very convoluted to expand and maintain.

This is where the file standards needs to come up. Things like FBX have come in and tried to full that space but just havent quite got there. Alembic is getting closer then most at moment. Ideally it need to be open sourced so that people can contribute to it.

[Hirazi Blue]

Ideally it need to be open sourced so that people can contribute to it.

I was under the impression that Alembic itself is open source.
Exocortex Crate probably isn't, but that's a different story (i.e. a commercial product).

[angus_davidson]

Ideally it need to be open sourced so that people can contribute to it.

I was under the impression that Alembic itself is open source.
Exocortex Crate probably isn't, but that's a different story (i.e. a commercial product).

As far as I am aware you are correct. I wasn't saying that alembic wasnt opensource, just that any standard decided upon should be. If that clears it up ;)

[ctedin]

Close integration of dcc app and game engine is why the houdini engine for unity is so exciting. I'd love to see something like that developed within ice. As far as the houdini engine, we'll have to see how it works in real life of course, but it looks really promising. (again, not a fanboy) ;)

[luceric]

This is where the file standards needs to come up. Things like FBX have come in and tried to full that space but just havent quite got there. Alembic is getting closer then most at moment.

Would you care to explain that? Because alembic is for moving baked geometry caches down the pipeline, it is not at all made for games. FBX is the industry standard for sending data to game engine, and I'm not aware of anyone looking to alembic for that. You typically won't be streaming baked animation caches in games, you want the data as light as possible and running in the game engine. Not everything plotted down in massive per-frame point cloud animations, which is what alembic was made for.

[csaez]

Close integration of dcc app and game engine is why the houdini engine for unity is so exciting. I'd love to see something like that developed within ice. As far as the houdini engine, we'll have to see how it works in real life of course, but it looks really promising. (again, not a fanboy) ;)

Autodesk is working to close the gap between artists-tools (aka maya) and game engines through project skyline.
http://www.cgchannel.com/2011/03/qa-aut ... line-team/

[angus_davidson]

This is where the file standards needs to come up. Things like FBX have come in and tried to full that space but just havent quite got there. Alembic is getting closer then most at moment.

Would you care to explain that? Because alembic is for moving baked geometry caches down the pipeline, it is not at all made for games. FBX is the industry standard for sending data to game engine, and I'm not aware of anyone looking to alembic for that. You typically won't be streaming baked animation caches in games, you want the data as light as possible and running in the game engine. Not everything plotted down in massive per-frame point cloud animations, which is what alembic was made for.

Just because its designed for something else doesnt mean it cant do a really good job in other areas. Have had much better luck with Alembic then with FBX transferring what I want. You really need to get out of that locked in mindset that people will only use things for the way you want them to use them. In reality people will use what ever they need in whatever way allows them to do what they need to do the best.

And that goes doubly for Softimage users who have to work around bugs that have been there for years and a very small chance of any major development coming their way

[ctedin]

Autodesk is working to close the gap between artists-tools (aka maya) and game engines through Project Skyline.

That's looking pretty powerful and exciting. Great for importing animated characters. As far as procedural assets like staircases and buildings, etc, the node based houdini system creates a flexible workflow.

[luceric]

This is where the file standards needs to come up. Things like FBX have come in and tried to full that space but just havent quite got there. Alembic is getting closer then most at moment.

Would you care to explain that? Because alembic is for moving baked geometry caches down the pipeline, it is not at all made for games. FBX is the industry standard for sending data to game engine, and I'm not aware of anyone looking to alembic for that. You typically won't be streaming baked animation caches in games, you want the data as light as possible and running in the game engine. Not everything plotted down in massive per-frame point cloud animations, which is what alembic was made for.

Just because its designed for something else doesnt mean it cant do a really good job in other areas. Have had much better luck with Alembic then with FBX transferring what I want. You really need to get out of that locked in mindset that people will only use things for the way you want them to use them. In reality people will use what ever they need in whatever way allows them to do what they need to do the best.

That's just a crazy, crazy reply. FBX library does both high level meta-data scene exchange *and* the plotted-down/cached animation that alembic covers, it's a super-set. Then again, the FBX tools are not very much used and haven't been developed in Softimage, so it's not surprising Softimage users don't see it at work. In any case, there are no game engine that use alembic, so no one has had"better luck" with it. Meanwhile EA and all the other big ones will continue to rely on FBX.

[luceric]

Autodesk is working to close the gap between artists-tools (aka maya) and game engines through Project Skyline.

That's looking pretty powerful and exciting. Great for importing animated characters. As far as procedural assets like staircases and buildings, etc, the node based houdini system creates a flexible workflow.

For clarity, here are the differences between Houdini Engine and the Skyline project
Houdini Engine:
- use a full copy of Houdini to produce an asset with a non-node-base UI (basically, a dialog box)
- edit the parameters with the simplified UI in the Unity Editor and bake out the result
Skyline
- a runtime that runs in the game engine itself (on xbox, playstation, etc)
- a node-base UI on the PC side to edit the procedural animation, with changes reflected immediately on the game console
- no baking of anything

[angus_davidson]

That's just a crazy, crazy reply. FBX library does both high level meta-data scene exchange *and* the plotted-down/cached animation that alembic covers, it's a super-set. Then again, the FBX tools are not very much used and haven't been developed in Softimage, so it's not surprising Softimage users don't see it at work. In any case, there are no game engine that use alembic, so no one has had"better luck" with it. Meanwhile EA and all the other big ones will continue to rely on FBX.

Yes FBX is supposed (and i will emphasize supposed )to do all of that -It might even do all of that in Maya. The times that I have used FBX (of various vintages) the results have been inconsistent / buggy. Graham can back me up that I have complained about this numerous times. Where as using Alembic for has been rock solid and repeatable.

FBX and Softimage are not great bedfellows and this is most likely down to not enough Dev resources to do a proper job.. Not all Softimage users are Games companies and we all do have different requirements. Or perhaps you feel that its only the big games companies that should be using Softimage ?

FBX can be the diamond in Maya and a lump of coal in Softimage depending on the implementation. That is a big problem if you using Softimage as your main application. You guys still havent even fixed the bugs in the OBJ import / export yet.