Softimage | 3D Particle

[markraz]

Anyone remember the old Softimage | 3D Particle engine?

Obviously clunky and you had to composite the resulting render with your 3D animation render,
but the particles looked really good and they rendered really FAST.

Is there a product like that on the market? I like XSI and Houdini and FumeFX etc...
but they are all really slow. Is there a product out there that has the speed and quality of SI Particle?

thanks

[Rork]

For XSI there is the Exocortex Fury(and maybe Slipstream) plugin.

There's also a golden oldie: Particle Illusion from Wondertouch.

rob

[luceric]

It was opengl rendered particles, the same thing as "hardware" rendering particles in Maya.

[markraz]

It was opengl rendered particles, the same thing as "hardware" rendering particles in Maya.

... the sprite algorithm was opengl ?

[luceric]

The softimage|3D particle app rendered with opengl, depth-sorting points and "cards" before drawing them. It's the same thing as dynamation and particles in Maya. There was no other renderer, and no need for it because none of that stuff requires ray tracing.. That's why you had to render it separately and z-composite it on top and couldn't render it all at once together in Softimage.

[markraz]

The softimage|3D particle app rendered with opengl, depth-sorting points and "cards" before drawing them. It's the same thing as dynamation and particles in Maya. There was no other renderer, and no need for it because none of that stuff requires ray tracing.. That's why you had to render it separately and z-composite it on top and couldn't render it all at once together in Softimage.

thanks... dynamation? isn't that the old "Wavefront" engine?

I never used Maya do you guys like it for particles??

[Rork]

Maya, particles and like in the same sentence. You really -never- used Maya for that ;-)

I don't know if the workflow and possibilities changed in the newer versions of Maya, but in the past in was a true pain in the behind.
With some very complex and limited ways of settings things up. Luc-Eric will probably disagree ;-P

ICE was a godsend after very quickly growing gray hair and a dislike anything particle in Maya.

For quickly rendring large amount of particles in XSI there's also emRPCfrom Etic Mootz.

rob

[luceric]

Rork keeps trying to "sell" you XSI plug-ins, but that's not how I'm interpreting the question, I'm thinking you're asking for real time feedback and no render required, not a different render. I'm not trying to "sell" Maya either, the particle engines in there is very much in the same line as Softimage Particles (tons of attributes, expressions, etc, not really a node-based workflow) and most maya shops use it in one way or another, some the small one, to the bigger one, all the way up to ILM. Here is one I visited last year.

In XSI's viewport i've seem some convincing dust clouds made with sprites, we just never tried to make that a workflow because everything always had to be mental ray and render region.

[markraz]

thanks guys

[Rork]

I'm not 'selling' anything, I'm just giving pointers and options. And yes, this is still a Softimage forum, hence the Softimage solutions.........

If real-time OpenGL playback you want, Particle Illusion is one the ways to go if you don't want to be stuck to a 3D app. Or after Effects.

cheers!

rob

[FXDude]

Anyone remember the old Softimage | 3D Particle engine?

Obviously clunky and you had to composite the resulting render with your 3D animation render,
but the particles looked really good and they rendered really FAST.

Indeed the SGI ver was quite stable while giving nice and fast results, but the NT version was quite buggy and felt like it was made too fast (with a UI that wasn't as cute looking )

Is there a product like that on the market? I like XSI and Houdini and FumeFX etc...
but they are all really slow. Is there a product out there that has the speed and quality of SI Particle?

thanks

For XSI there is the Exocortex Fury(and maybe Slipstream) plugin.

There's also a golden oldie: Particle Illusion from Wondertouch.

rob

I was going to say Exocortex, or perhaps also Kratakoa?

[Tekano]

to expand upon what Luc Eric is saying. what is it that is currently slow for you. eg which renderer / shader are you using? what task are you trying to fulfill that is currently painfully slow.

As he says they concentrated on other areas but still there are many ways to optimize what you have already to get renders out as fast, perhaps faster than what the Softimage standalone particle engine did in 1996. I used it, was infinitely more painful for me back then than it is now.

Elaborate on what is slower for you and let us demonstrate how to get it faster. simples