Is ICE the best way to learn the guts?

[Bullit]

I mean in the sense that is more adaptable to other softwares, i list the apps and plugins that ICE can give an advantage learn:

3dsMax - ParticleFlow in DataFlow submode.
- Thinking Particles
- there are other nodal tools in works

Cinema 4D- expresso

Maya - eventual futur nodal bifrost (ex softimage people might turn familiar)

Houdini - everything nodal(maybe ICE lacks a bit here since it is not so comprehensive)

Fabric Engine - future nodal (ex softimage people might turn familiar)

Realflow - nodal mode

Blender - nodal tools in works.

[Draise]

Also.. um.. game engines that use nodal approaches - be it Cryengine or Unreal, or even Unity? As far as I know they use nodal logic sometimes. Even Nuke in a limited sense, but yeah. Ice is opening door for me, great learning tool. ;)

[NNois]

@bullit you're recently talking much about max and thinking particle... are you aware that's just not the same thing than ICE ? ice can create / manipulate / simulate scene data (numbers/polygon/points/textures etc) with a nodal system, this is not the same than a particle plugin

[MauricioPC]

@bullit you're recently talking much about max and thinking particle... are you aware that's just not the same thing than ICE ? ice can create / manipulate / simulate scene data (numbers/polygon/points/textures etc) with a nodal system, this is not the same than a particle plugin

Yeah, but what can he do? If he doesn't own Softimage (me too), there's nothing we can do instead of looking for alternatives. Ever since the end of Softimage I've played more in-depth with Max or Maya, trying to choose the 'substitute'. Before, I always knew I could go back to SI, now it's impossible. :/

Edit:

Just to add one more thing ... I think Bullit is looking for excuses to still study and learn Softimage.
I know I am ... but I always get stuck in the "I'll never be able to buy it and use it professionally" problem ... but my learning curve was a lot simpler with SI than with Maya.

[NNois]

Well, follow me or not but it's a nonsense going max or maya, the codebase is so old... Yeah you're going to have gigs with that but what type of gigs ? the same as everyone ??

I tend to assume than people ended with softimage precisly aren't the same as everyone, they tend to be "better" because they get it, so... just leave the boat and continue the path you've started choosing outsider software or you'll regret it.

[MauricioPC]

Well, follow me or not but it's a nonsense going max or maya, the codebase is so old... Yeah you're going to have gigs with that but what type of gigs ? the same as everyone ??

I tend to assume than people ended with softimage precisly aren't the same as everyone, they tend to be "better" because they get it, so... just leave the boat and continue the path you've started choosing outsider software or you'll regret it.

I understand what you are saying ... but in that sense, isn't Houdini and C4D code as old as Maya or Max code? At least in Maya there's a 'promise' of a future ICE implementation. Today I doubt Max will ever see BiFrost.

[Bullit]

@bullit you're recently talking much about max and thinking particle... are you aware that's just not the same thing than ICE ? ice can create / manipulate / simulate scene data (numbers/polygon/points/textures etc) with a nodal system, this is not the same than a particle plugin

NNois Thinking Particles is not just a particle plugin despite the name.

Just to add one more thing ... I think Bullit is looking for excuses to still study and learn Softimage.

It is not an excuse, i don't find any place to go except Cinema 4D or 3dMax which i detest and needs a bunch of plugins , Houdini which is great in what it does well is practice an half program and expensive.

[MauricioPC]

@bullit you're recently talking much about max and thinking particle... are you aware that's just not the same thing than ICE ? ice can create / manipulate / simulate scene data (numbers/polygon/points/textures etc) with a nodal system, this is not the same than a particle plugin

NNois Thinking Particles is not just a particle plugin despite the name.

Just to add one more thing ... I think Bullit is looking for excuses to still study and learn Softimage.

It is not an excuse, i don't find any place to go except Cinema 4D or 3dMax which i detest and needs a bunch of plugins , Houdini which is great in what it does well is practice an half program and expensive.

Yeah ... Thinking Particles is a dynamics engine as well. You can see the demolition of the SHIELD building on the last Cap America movie ... it's all TP work there and it's f* amazing.

Bullit, I still prefer Max. Depending on what you do, C4D also demands lots of plugins, but the good thing is that the plugins are cheaper. You cant really compare any plugin that C4D has with TP, Frost, Stoke (the new one looks AMAZING), RayFire (I dare anybody to find a better commercial fracturing plugin - DMM, PDI, Fracture, they don't get even close), etc.

And have you seen Corona? I've talked to some very talented professionals here in Brazil and they are using it on production and saying that's faster than VRay even (and all CPU). It's not all complete, but it's looking very good.

The only problem for me that C4D and Max has is for character animation tools ... there SI is king and Maya is the usurper. But Eddie said that Max 16 will see some improvement on the animation side (that's why, I think, they hired Martin Coven). For me, Maya is still very powerful because of the fluids system ... you can create some realistic fire/smoke on it (and I like FX). But choose Maya only because of this ... I don't know.

[Hirazi Blue]

But Eddie said that Max 16 will see some improvement on the animation side (that's why, I think, they hired Martin Coven).

But you do know what former PM Jason Brynford-Jones AKA Chinny once said about the future of Softimage, don't you?
I wouldn't base any purchasing decisions on offhand remarks by Autodesk employees and/or vague future plans.

[MauricioPC]

But Eddie said that Max 16 will see some improvement on the animation side (that's why, I think, they hired Martin Coven).

But you do know what former PM Jason-Brynford Jones AKA Chinny once said about the future of Softimage, don't you?
I wouldn't base any purchasing decisions on offhand remarks by Autodesk employees and/or vague future plans.

Yeah, I know. :/

Well ... Softimage 2015 Student version is still available. I may just choose to continue studying in it until the thing stops working.

[NNois]

Well, SideFx TheFoundry and Maxxon has pretty good alternative, keep in mind than innovation always comes from the outsiders.

Devs are Artists, just like us, they want to be proud of their software, just like YOU want to be proud of your software. Are you ? Do you feel the love devs put in the tool you are using ? I feel that every day in softimage, and i feel that even more too in houdini i'm learning slowly.

Feel that too on clarisse/guerilla/octane/arnold/modo, this are devs and great people trying to solve every day artists problems by taking problems at root because they can and because they want.

[luceric]

ICE is only the best way to learn the guts of Softimage. Doesn't matter that some things can be applicable to other things. How many times do you need to learn vectors and matrices. Fundamentally, it's in a little Softimage bubble and nothing else really works that way.

[Pooby]

Sorry but thats preposterous nonsense in my opinion.

Since learning ICE I can watch Houdini Tutorials and understand exactly why they are doing what they are doing even if I dont have the knowledge of the Software.. Thats nothing to do with Softimage, thats because I understand how to manipulate Data, which is directly attributable to the knowledge gained by my ICE work.

[luceric]

ok, but that doesn't say that it would be "the best", if any such thing is possible. ICE is just one of the many node system out there, if learning to think procedurally was the question here.

The ICE system works in its own way, with polymorphism, evaluating right-to-left, implicit looping, it only really covers one approach to proceduralism, one style that hardly directly portable to other products. It's not a rosetta stone of proceduralism or a super-set of what's in other product. It has a distinct personality, designed-in pros and cons, and pushes you in some approaches and not others.

The best way to learn anything, imho, is if you need it.

[Pooby]

The thought process that you develop when manipulating data in ICE is not Softimage ICE specific.
It is a valuable knowledge that equips you to approach many other solutions with an understanding of how to achieve what you want.
The difference in paradigm between ICE and say Houdini is far easier learnt.

[Mathaeus]

I'd say, it really depends on personal experience, what was the tool, when someone learned this or that. Very personally, when it comes to basic transformations, trig functions, direction constraint. law of cosiness and so - I owe this part to standard SI kinematics. Even it had no ICE style visual feedback, always it was possible to just plot something animated. Concept of let's say, custom attribute, or behavior where new set data on same attribute overrides the existing one, and such, this part is engraved in my mind, by good old POV-Ray. Ice somehow belongs to dealing with huge numbers, pasterns in huge numbers. Sound silly, but for me, one of most fascinating things it was first-time ability to render the believable dust - where half of experience belongs to 3delight, btw. A lot of experience with visual appearance of these huge numbers, too. Name Moondust is correct, for me.

Anyway, sow this more than one time, that people on Houdini forums are asking for implementation of ICE style visual feedback.

How this apply to, for exact example, C4d Xpresso. I'd say, not that much - as name says, it is visual expression editor, precisely set to extend the functions of c4d Mograph and few other things. A lot of ICE features does not exist at all, performance is nowhere close. Anyway Mograph itself, offers much shorter procedures when working with text, it's able to apply the spring dynamics in one go, Xpresso is simpler than ICE with dealing with small groups. That's it. Version of Thinking Particles in c4d, definitively is not the same as latest Max plugin - c4d thing hardly can reach 50-100k particles, but still slaps the user with many parameters, multiple xpresso trees around scene, cryptic naming.