particle war!

[Equinoxx]

My guess would be Thinking Particles + Afterburn ;)

[gaggle]

Ah but alas, TP does not play with Afterburn I've been told.

Personally I would go with TP. I don't have a terrible lot of experience with volumetric plugins ala Afterburn, but I do know that I favor the movement of particles, rather than their looks. Triangles/facing particles will get you very far, once the particles are moving just right.

It comes down to the thought that what I personally crave the most with particles is the ability to set up events once and for all and just have them triggered at all the right places. And since I've been told that TP can do more I tend to favor that aspect. Even if it means having to use Pyrocluster, which I've been told is not as good as Afterburn.

TP might be more complex, but I would hate to suddenly be stuck in a package that wouldn't allow for certain things to work just as I'd like them to work :)

I should note that when I say one product is better than the other I'm not talking strict facts, for all I know comparing them could be a rerun of the whole Mac vs. PC discussion.. I'm just pretty much going by what I've seen and heard from others at work :)

[BrandonD]

Agreed, TP is the overall most capable particle tool for MAX at the moment - very comparable to Houdini's POP (duck!). Afterburn is hard to beat for volumetrics, but yes it doesn't work well with TP, while PCluster has been modified to work very nicely with it.

Still, you'd be surprised with what you can get away with by just using default particles. In fact, over the last year or so I've strictly used default lame-o MAX particles with Afterburn in every major production.

[yoni-cohen]

well we've been doing all the effects with max particles + facing +material editor and it can do magic but..
max will fail when complex events are needed..
max facing particles would be seen when the smoke effect will be intersecting with the ground and other objects..

I haven't used afterburn nor have I used pyrocluster but I've played with both TP and particle studio and TP seems much stronger and it did'nt take more then a day to learn.

if someone could simply tell about the plus/cons of each atmospheric it would be great!

[gaggle]

Hey I'd be interested in a comparison as well, hooray :)

I got to thinking, and boy is this the wrong forum to say this in I guess :), but Maya's particles offers in many ways much the same as TP's does, I've been told, what with the node-based thing and all. And now that Maya 4.5 has volumetric effects... (note that I don't know how its volumetric rendere compares to, say, that of Afterburns)

Well anyways, just thinking out loud :rolleyes:

[yoni-cohen]

realy I think maya has some greate dynamics and node based editing but we're a 3dsmax facility with all the licenses well, even our combined softimage3d 4 can't quite fit into the pipeline so unless there is a very good conncetion between maya and max I won't trade the price of TP with pyrocluster for 6k worth of maya..

[BrandonD]

Originally posted by gaggle
Hey I'd be interested in a comparison as well, hooray :)

I got to thinking, and boy is this the wrong forum to say this in I guess :), but Maya's particles offers in many ways much the same as TP's does, I've been told, what with the node-based thing and all. And now that Maya 4.5 has volumetric effects... (note that I don't know how its volumetric rendere compares to, say, that of Afterburns)

Well anyways, just thinking out loud :rolleyes:


Actually Maya's particles are quite different than Thinking Particle's node-based approach. Sure you can setup rules, but it's all done under the hood with creation/runtime expressions. TP is more like Houdini's Particle Operators, definitely more visual in its approach. Maya particles are basically Dynamation, a groundbreaking package in the early 90s, but in my opinion a bit outdated. However for all of the annoyances, there are some really cool things in there (in particular emitters/fields and very effecient viewport feedback).

From what I've experienced, Maya Volumetrics (s/w Cloud) can't really compare to Afterburn, especially when it comes to self-shading/shadowing. However you do have more control in driving the volumetrics with the particle data (similar to PyroCluster integration with Thinking Particles).

The Maya fluid stuff is a unique beast. It's a voxel fluid tool, not something that you'd use like Afterburn.

[googlo]

I would op for the thinking particles and pyrocluster just because tp's is very impressive. I think matterwaves comes with it too doesn't it?

a side question: If you are just using TP to tell particles how to move around, could you just 'layer' Afterburn on top of that? I thought particles were just like a 'template' for Afterburn to work from.

[BrandonD]

Well, there's more to it than that. Thinking Particles doesn't work within the normal MAX SDK framework of SimpleParticle, so other plugins don't really see TP as particles - but PyroCluster does.

[TOMMY 3D FREAK]

I would definitly go for particle studio plus afterburn.

I will explain...

Yes indeed, TP is at the cutting edge of particle systems and yes it has an incredible amount of flexibility, but only few people are capable to work with TP because of the enormous learning curve. (I know what you're gonna say, but believe me, it's really hard to learn). Once you get the hang of it, it really is an amazing piece of software.

Now on to particle studio. This is absolutely the option for advanced users of 3dsmax. It has a very user-friendly interface and the event driven particles are very easily controllable. OK, it's not the cutting edge, but definitly enough for the most complicated space xplosion or whatever...

Where it comes to compatibillity, Afterburn is not compatible with TP but is with PS. And if I'm not mistaken, Pyrocluster is compatibel with PS and not with TP.

As for afterburn: supersoftware for an affordable price! no doubt about that! It has to my opinion lot's of advantages in comparison to PC. One is the ability to render out an animation of a single particle in the preview window. Also the great rollouts, and the way the plugin is set up is to my opinion very good, Try allan mc kays tutorials on 3dluvr, you'll know what i mean...

Pyrocluster is absolutely nice, but is not worth the price really... The way it renders out is nice but not really credible. (Sorry cebas)
Nice for a beginner, but not for the advanced user. By the way, an annoying fact of pyrocluster is the inablity to save gradients...

I hope I was able to fundament my opinion towards this issue and I hope to hear form you when you have made a decision...


_______________________________________________
Let's create a world of our own, 3D is the key...:buttrock:

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