So this is a side project at the moment. Using it as an opportunity to learn the Maya Api. With Bifrost already available, I was wondering if there’s an interest for a low budget fluid simulator mainly targeted at smaller scenes and motion graphics. This is a SPH simulator, that would be the main difference with Bifrost.
Interest in a another fluid plugin for Maya?
It’s always nice to have options!
But I think you’re going to need a better demo of your product to generate real interest. What’s different about it? What is “SPH”, for anyone not “in the know” already? How does it look when rendered?
I had a rough time with Bifrost but it’s usable, and slightly more so than Nparticles for larger scale simulations. Since I mostly do environments, a liquid simulator has to be able to handle ocean waves and rivers and streams to be valuable to me. Just VFX, obviously, but the simulation scale and speed is pretty important, as well as the final rendered look.
deepfxworld
#3
This is nowhere near ready, I’m in the very early stages of integrating stuff, so the interesting stuff will come later. I will remember to highlight the differences when it reaches that point.
For big ocean scenes you’re better off with Bifrost, it’s more efficient for that sort of thing. However rivers and streams should be possible. I will let people judge the speed, but it’s highly multi threaded on the CPU, and there’s an OpenCl version already working. Deep Rising is a collection of simulators, at the moment there’s the fluid simulator, a high viscosity solver, and a granular solver. When I can show more i will. Thanks for the feedback.
Onouris
#4
FX wise an affordable fracturing plugin would be better i think ( i mean a good fast one, not some rubbish scripts that are slow as hell).
You would probably have better chances to sell it. I mean considering Bifrost already here and the fact that it will evolve more and more with time. And for the moment we didn’t hear anything from AD about including a fracturing solution. (even if i think that the MASH guys will probably add a fracture node at some point)
deepfxworld
#5
There’s quite a few commercial fracturing tools for Maya. Pulldownit, Fracture FX, DMM, to mention a few. They all seem quite robust, is there something missing from those offerings?
Onouris
#6
they are great especially fractureFX, but bit expensive if you want to target mid agencies or freelancer that want some quick fracture for motion graphics.
Bifrost is already in maya for free and will evolve more and more. For fracturing you need plugins and they are not cheap.
So my point is, having an affordable fracturing plugin is maybe easier if you want to make your hole in the maya plugin field.
deepfxworld
#7
Okay, noted, thanks for the feedback. It would also be nice if other people expressed interest in this, to show there’s potential here.
coccosoids
#8
I am not sure what to say - if you had a system that would replace maya’s fluids and nparticle for these kinds of effects I think you would have good audience base. Maya’s native fluids haven’t been updated in a ton of years and they were always hard to work with - as for nparticles, I personally hate them - the thing I dislike the most with them is that they always find a way to bloat / dirty up your scene - weird ways in which you have to disable the solvers, weird behavior in general, no coherent unit system etc…
If you can come up with a nice, clean, well integrated - mid sized project oriented solver for fluids I for one would be interested. Not for large scale sims, everybody goes to houdini for that anyway, but stuff for the general populace - fluids on curves, flames, fires, debris, motion graphics stuff similar to what you find in c4d, an easy and clean instancer / geometry replace workflow etc
*my 2 cents
Aikiman
#10
I agree with the comments above regarding fracturing as fluids and particles are covered by Bifrost. Definitely leverage Bifrost framework if possible, I believe its closed architecture for now but integrating your development with the solver will make your product more viable and flexible once it is open to developers.