Does Comb4 use pIllusion 3 engine?

#1

I tried to search some info on the question that propably matters the most to me, but couldnt find it anywhere…

Did Discreet update Combustion’s particle engine to pIllusion 3 or higher? Or is still in version 2?

.hilt

#2

From ParticleIllusion website (www.wondertouch.com) I read that Combustion 4 still uses the ‘good’ old pIllusion 2 engine.

Shame indeed, as one of the Combustion advantages over After Effects was said to be particles. Not sure how true that is, since after I purchased Combustion3, I needed to get standalone of pIllusion just to get any working particles. Particles in Comb3 were a bad joke or discreet hype for me. pIllusion 2 had severe problems in it, so it would’ve made sense that they finally updated the particles engine to even somewhat modern.

After Effects already has Trapcode Particular and it will also soon get plugin for Particle Illusion (enhanced version 3).

Any ideas what will future bring to Combustion’s particles? plugins like Particular or pIllusion or is it just useless to dream working with 2D-particles within Combustion?

#3

Hi,

There’s so much more they could do with the particles in combustion when you consider what kind of data is available in the RPF file format.

If you’ve got velocity data, normal data, z-buffer etc. you could have particles spawning off the RPF files and reacting to the motion of the CG Character. Of course you could set this up in Max, but it would be cool to be able to have this control in the composite as well, and be able to have ridiculously high particle counts.

Say you were doing a Balrog type character, you would have pretty much all the information in the RPF of the character to generate some pretty interesting particles in post.

A guy called Alex Macleod posted a render effect script on the Autodesk support forum which does something similar.

  • Steve
#4

I agree, I’m really disappointed that Combustion hasn’t upgraded to the PI 3 engine yet, I love Combustion’s particles, but there are some fantastic options in PI 3 that would be great to be able to use in Combustion.

#5

At the local Combustion 4 Tour it was stated that “Combustion 4 doesn’t currently use the PI3 engine.” Does that mean they are trying to get it or not I don’t know. What you have to remember is this could all be the Wondertouch guys not wanting to license their new technology. PI is not a Autodesk product it is a third party product and so any upgrades arent as easy as just putting it in the program. It has to be agreed upon and licensed with both companies.

-Eric

#6

I’m not an official spokesman or anything, I just do some occassional stuff for wondertouch. I was demoing pI3 in the wondertouch booth at NAB this past week, and we did get a good number of combustion users asking if the particles would be upgraded. It’s not an issue with Wondertouch not wanting to update it, Autodeskreet doesn’t seem to be interested in changing the particles in Combustion.

#7

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