Fabric 1.12: GPU Compute, Splice Rendering, Characters

[FabricPaul]

Hi everyone,

In terms of milestone releases, Fabric 1.12 is a big one for us. There are various projects coming to fruition that have meant this turned into a much bigger release than anticipated, and we really hope that you guys are excited as we are by what's on show here.

A quick look at one of the release demos: https://vimeo.com/99233334

As we start gearing up for Siggraph, I think this is a pretty good indication of intent ;) If you've tried transitioning to Maya, you might enjoy the new painting system we've implemented.

Blog post covering the release: http://fabricengine.com/2014/06/fabric- ... next-step/

We'd like to thank everyone who's supported us in getting this far, and we can't wait to see what you get up to with this release. Go and get it now! http://fabricengine.com/get-fabric/

Cheers,

Paul

[Draise]

Nice one! Splice rendering. You mentioned you can have the same viewport splice rendering also in Softimage...? Do you have a showcase of the such also? That would be a phenomenal update! Great work.

[EricTRocks]

@Draise: Not sure what you're asking about. The Fabric OGL renderer lays over the Softimage viewport as you can see in the videos.

[Draise]

Oh cool! That sounds great.

I did not see many videos with Softimage, mostly Maya, so maybe that is why I didn't see the implementation of the features in the such.

[EricTRocks]

It works the same in both. The code for the tools also runs off of the same code too.

[Pancho]

Any updates on the nodal workflow?

[Bullit]

Yeah that is what i am looking for too

[EricTRocks]

You should join the Fabric mailing list to keep up to date.

From Paul on the mailing list:

We’ll be showing Fabric 2.0 at Siggraph – we have a day of user groups lined up for the Tuesday of the show, and we’re going to have two sessions covering the visual programming system. I’ll share the schedule here once everything is nailed down, but it’s going to be cool.

We’ll also have a meeting room on the show floor, which I expect will get booked up quite quickly. We’ll release videos of the various demos at the start of Siggraph, so if you aren’t able to attend you won’t miss anything.

In terms of release, we’re aiming for Fall 2014 but nothing guaranteed at this point. It’s a huge project.

Thanks,

Paul

[FXDude]

It works the same in both. The code for the tools also runs off of the same code too.

Which is why there should perhaps be at least 1 clip showing just that ;)

[EricTRocks]

That's funny because there are numerous videos (including those in the new release) which show exactly that.

[xsi_fanatic]

I hope someone can answer this question without throwing a punch at me... but what's the big deal about this release of Fabric? I mean how does it make things any better than what we have now with the current version of Soft ?

[Manticor]

GPU powered ICE 2.0 ... and then some...

[Draise]

Better viewport and expanded toolset? Unifying rigged and simulated workflows between apps to further development of SI beyond EOL? Adding functionality to SI and other spliced apps?

[Hirazi Blue]

Not the tools it has on offer, but the tools it enables you to create?

[EricTRocks]

The biggest thing for me is the weight painting capabilities we now have (generic painting system actually, sculpting, color attr painting, weight maps, envelope maps, etc.). After that they re-built the inline drawing system to add more features and to make it SUPER fast. Let's just say for some tools we use at work it went from 7fps to 60fps playback speeds.

No it's not a Softimage replacement but it's at a very good state to build tools like envelope skinning tools, that don't use either the Softimage OR Maya toolsets. This means you can build your tools faster, fix bugs without waiting for AD, and add new tool types as well. Create your enveloping tools in Splice, run it in both Maya and Softimage with little if any code change. When Fabric becomes available for other software, it'll be the same case.

[FXDude]

That's funny because there are numerous videos (including those in the new release) which show exactly that.

Okay, maybe I just didn't see them.

Otherwise I was impressed by the performance of the heavy red car (among others), but particularly the muscle system clip, never saw one nearly as "live"!