Fluid Effects vs Fume FX

#361

I’m thinking about the difference between the 2 options.

fumefx seems to be a mixture of a real fluid simulation with pseudo secondary turbulence(unlike the built in maya fluid turbulence), and equipped with a fine texture system, and on the other hand, maya fluid is like a pure fluid simulation engine with a beta version of texture function. Sometimes i see a fume sim, even if it’s highly detailed, with some extra fine eddies and swirls, stretching and squeezing, it’s more like a secondary faked effect, driven by procedural algorithms.

#362

Actually, I don’t believe it.

I’ve use two system of fluid fx, fumefx is much faster than maya fluid.

As the same question, I use Pyro in houdini new fluid system. Pyro is better, too.

Especially in wispy smoke and fire, there’re some silk-like trail at the end of it.

You don’t need to set a lot of attributes, just up its rez and get a nice solution.

Really awesome.

If you’re not agree with me, show me your example.

#363

OK. i gotta get this off my chest lol

If you are using maya fluids and you want good detail, DO NOT make your diffusion settings more than .005

the diffusion settings is what kills detail… becase… it diffuses it… even with a really high res box.

so if you want wispy smoke, you gotta keep diffusion extremely low and use fields to stretch it out.

yeah i know you actually have to think to use maya fluids… if you dont like thinking maybe fume is better for you.

my render times for maya fluids are about 7 seconds at full 1080p resolution and sometimes go as high as 50seconds. if you are getting slow renders… you are doing it wrong…

#364

Yeah, particular 2.0 has self shadowing and shading attributes. It’s very great and easy to use. Similar to Maya you get emitters and you can instance objects or sprite animations to them. The control of the particles is also very easy with nulls and expressions. But then you have all those wonderful plug ins and effects you can add to your particles that maya doesn’t have. Also, i have heard there is a way to animate your particles with mouse movement. Still have to look into this. But i have to agree, it depends what your project is, then you can decide which software to use. As for me, i love having options, so i can’t really decide one over the other.

#365

Actually I’m a royal maya fluid user. I had discuss with my mates several times.

They are all support with fumefx, I try to find a reason against it.

But I search information on google and youtube, always find odd maya fluid example.

I think the point is the evidance, so just show it and make others shut up.

#366

well im using maya fluids for a feature film and even though we have fume fx available the tests i have made with maya have been more than adequate and are currently the tool of choice. ill have to whip some up NON nda examples but i really dont see why i should… its not hard for anyone to read this thread, go to duncans corner and do a little research and get these results themselves. this thread has a wealth of examples, just open them up and see what makes them tick.

speaking of duncans corner, he has some examples of nparticle fluid sims. LOTS of particles and it looks amazing. extremely detailed, krakatoa style.

infact im tempted to make a fluid fire sim and combine that with an nparticle smoke, that way i dont need to make a huge fluid box…

worth checking em out…

also a note to maya developers… please reduce the diffusion effects on density, maybe by a factor of 10 or 100. or put in a warning about making em too high. i think alot of poeple are killing it with diffusion.

that and make the particle fluid boundless and grow cells dynamically :wink:

and a proper texture coordinates system that actually sticks to the fluids

#367

Which of the blogs on Duncan’s corner has the krakatoa like effect? I’m interested to check it out but not sure which one it is.

#368

I don’t remember exactly I think it was one of his siggraph 2009 talks. You should watch them all btw they are full of useful info

#369

Here is the link to the Video by Duncan. The effect is at the 2:25 mark.
http://area.autodesk.com/inhouse/videos/siggraph_2009_autodesk_sponsored_tech_talk_part3

It doesn’t look quite like krakatoa, but the movement is very similar. Believe krakatoa is way more detailed. Regardless, a damn good sim by Duncan just with nparticles.

Okay now I have to get this off my chest.

@ Stooch. I agree with you 100% percent with what you are saying. It all depends on the artist and the skill set. It also depends on your job’s pipeline. If you are not a Max house but you use Maya, Maya fluids will be used. Same goes for Houdini.

Yes Fume looks very nice right out of the box. One press of the button and…wow, you have incredible wispy looking smoke! If I could give you my opinion, I think Fume has just one look. Show me a good rocket trail done with Fume. Better yet show me a good explosion done with Fume. I can’t find one…okay, okay, oh yeah, there is one…JUST one. A few tests done by this kid named Wreath over in the fume thread. But he’s an exception. Oh yeah, Brandon Riza is a freak with fume too. He might be alien. These are the only guys Iv’e seen with great results. 3dsMax guys will tell you, that they have to revert to afterburn for sims Fume can’t get done.

Now look, on the other side, Maya fluids could be an absolute nightmare. You have to build from scratch. That’s why people run from it. Setting parameter after parameter, and understanding how Maya Fluids work, with alot of patience creates a good Maya fluid. Like stooch said, hope the guys over at Autodesk start thinking about improving Maya fluids in the upcoming versions. If not, Fume will only improve, while Maya’s workflow stays the same.

After all that, I think Houdini’s PyroFX is eventually going to put FumeFx and Maya Fluids to sleep. It’s a hybrid. It can create Fume smoke, and any type of Maya smoke. More stable, and has sick upres features. This is what seperates Pyro from the pack. Many VFX houses that are heavy in Houdini are very happy right now.

But since this a MAYA fluids thread. Keep the tests and techniques coming. :lightbulb

#370

Yeah Duncans example didn’t use as many patitcles as I would but even if you take his example and slap on a decent cloud shader, I think you can get some pleasing results

or yo cold use a script to interpolate the sim and cheaply add some intermediate particles to it. The movement is spot on though.

You just have to thInk outside the (fluid) box.

#371

I love this nuke…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsTRxXvQY0s&feature=related

best nuke Ive seen and its done in fume. Ive also seen some really beautiful explosions done in Maya too that appear on this thread namely Tokanohanna, but this one definitely rocks my boat.

@ stooch
thanks for the tip on diffusion, part of my problem is density “stretching” like veins into other voxels. I thought it may have been unstable velocities but this might be the solution for me. :slight_smile:

#372

that sounds like your solver quality wasnt set high enough too. if you are getting veins of sim, then chances are low that you have too much diffusion, diffusion would prevent the veins from being very thin. but what DOES make things collapse is an insufficient solver quality - 200 is not unheard of. also i would keep an eye on velocity draw arrows too. so that you are 100% sure that there isnt an accelerating rate of growth. i set my draw skip pretty high because most of the time all ic are about is the acceleration curve of the velocity. thats when i would use damping to slow them down. of course there is also friction settings too, which work together with damping. Also if you are animating fluids, dont try to get the speed of the sim purely with simulation rate scale, because that works against stability in the solver quality. so you are better off doing the skip frames caching to accelerate or oversampling to decelerate.

here is a code snippet from my toolset. it sets up a controller for your fluid container that lets you change the playback rate of the cache, along with cache offset frame.

select your fluid, Run the script, then cache your fluids at frame undersampling for example: 2.
once its done caching, simply change your cache frame skip setting to match the undersampling of 2… and voila your fire/exploision is twice as fast without having to generate twice as much simulation… or hacving to crank up your simulation rate scale which makes your solve unstable. eat that fumefx… THIS is the key to making an explosion btw… as we all kniow, explosions are FAST… so imagine skipping every 4 or 5 cache frames…

#373

From the tags on that video and the general look of it, I would say that is Afterburn not FumeFX. :slight_smile:

#374

Tags? what tags?

#375

Click “more info”. :slight_smile:

#376

@Aikiman: Thanks bud. I agree with you about the Nuke on youtube. It’s very good, but like Cheesestraws pointed out it was done in Afterburn. It’s very hard to create a good nuke with fume. It’s probably just as hard to do in Maya.

@Stooch: Thank you for this script. This is great. I will be testing this out all week. :bowdown:

#377

Wow thats even more impressive haha, oh well I guess it still has the FumeFX feel to it.

#378

fast hardware and lots of ram help too :slight_smile:

#379

heh a quad core with 6 gigs should be the standard for 3d guys right :wink:

but seriously there are very few options needed for rendering most fluids. Often i use maya software instead of MR, ill save MR for specific needs like volumetric shadows etc. it is VERY impressive how fast maya render fluids. i just wish the texturing was more complete.

#380

The preview of Maya Fluid in maya is sooooo bueatiful. But sometimes (probably all the time) we render it and got ugly one. Does it have other way to render maya fluid by Hardware?