ICE Kinematics compound

[laseraptor]

Hi , I'm looking for ik compounds from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2PoPmLGQFc
It's called ICE Kinematics Workgroup Compounds or something like this. I know it's old but maybe somebody can help me.

link to wiki of this compounds: http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/ind ... oldid=8169

[jonmoore]

They're in your install folder - Program Files/Autodesk/Softimage Version/Application/Workgroups/ICE_Kinematics.

To be honest, working with ICE Kinematics becomes a complex affair, once you start wanting to apply them to production scale rigs. That's the reason that the ICE Kinematics compounds are hidden away in an installation path Workgroup. The potential for greatness was always there, but Autodesk never pushed the idea forward from their initial introduction.

I'm not saying that they're not worth exploring but they're most definitely not the panacea that Autodesk hyped them to be, and you need to be a relatively experienced TD level rigger to profit from ICE Kinematics (with a solid understanding of linear algebra).

[opoppopopp]

Compare to traditional C++ Scripted OP, will ICE Kinematics node provide more efficiency ?
Lazy to test this, but to use custom rig(even that good old biped) over and over, even today...

But by increasingly experienced the outdated "single core limitation" of XSI these days
e.g. open scene file, import things, delete huge chunk of objects, etc.
I start to investigate is there still some potential to fix these kind of things... like ICE Kinematics discussed here.

[jonmoore]

I think Soft is holding up incredibly well by modern standards from a pure performance perspective. It's biggest speed killer these days is the viewport (although for pure particle effects, it's still pacy). But nothing is a match for the fluidity of workflow in Soft, and as the Arnold team like to preach, artist time is more valuable than processor performance!

ICE kinematics are very fast but it's an unfinished toolset with many quirks and restrictions so it's hard judge it as being fully production capable. That's not to say that you can't take advantage of it's strengths (lean rig setups and raw rig performance), and then Alembic out your assets for scene assembly in the likes Houdini or Clarisse.

Now that Parallel Evaluation in Maya is reaching maturity it's most definitely the most performant character animation DCC toolset. That, coupled with all the smart behind the scenes caching makes a powerful combination. But there are many toolsets that TD's rely on in Maya (such as the SOuP suite of operators) that necessitates Parallel Evaluation to be disabled). Even in this second decade of the new millennium, CG production is all too often throttled to minimal processor core utilisation. And with that it mind, I think the good ship XSI still has a few laps of the circuit in her before her wheels fall off...

[opoppopopp]

But nothing is a match for the fluidity of workflow in Soft......artist time is more valuable than processor performance!

I think the good ship XSI still has a few laps of the circuit in her before her wheels fall off...

Totally agree you point, and that is why I still lost in those good old Biped...and Clusters...
But in the few examples I list above, like multi-thread on duplicate/purge objects, will be very helpful, wait for those some times break that "fluidity". I admit, I just too greedy

And for the ICE kinematics, still wonder if it is the true bottle neck of the playback speed, or maybe data just have to wait to put in to video cards, no matter how fast it gets calculated (I think one of the Fabric Engine video demo this with its own scene drawing function, and I think maybe this is the "smart behind the scenes caching" maya did)

[jonmoore]

For those wanting to explore ICE Kinematics (warts and all), uber Soft addon developer Shekn put together 7 ace video tutorials a few years back that provide a great visual description of ICE Kine use cases. They're in Russian, but they're subtitled so you can disable the audio and listen to Spotify whilst watching.

https://vimeo.com/user3518710/videos/page:2/sort:date

[laseraptor]

Thank you all for the reply and helpful informations.

[jonmoore]

The last set of videos were more a case of what's going on under the hood with ICE Kinematics. Talented French character TD Ahmidou Lyazidi, posted a bunch of videos displaying the good side of ICE Kine on a real world asset and a little under the hood explanations to boot. Definitely worth a watch.

https://vimeo.com/ahmidou