naiad particles into ICE

[Rob Chapman]

Hi folks,

trying out the splendid Naiad, its still early days for a Naiad Softimage buddy and looking at the forums I do believe there is one planned, but at the moment the only option I've got for exporting particles is native .emp  or Krakatoa .prt format. (And deferred loading formats for Arnold and 3Delight)

Have tried.obj mesh export already (very clunky in Softimage) and just recently managed to get particles written to an Arnold .Ass file, but really I would like to have the particles as a cache that can be loaded / dealt with in ICE.

Steven Caron's Kies sadly can only export Krakatoa particles, not import them, which is a shame.


does anyone know how to get Naiad particles into Softimage?

best regards,

Rob

[Juhani Karlsson]

I haven`t used Naiad, but is it possible to export the simulation into realflow .bin? (You would think its possible trough some way)
With .bin you could use the realflow importer to get it into SI?

- Juhani

2012/5/11 Rob Chapman <tekan...@gmail.com>

[Stefan Kubicek]

Thats exactly where I'm stuck too.
One might think it shouldn't be too hard to derive a Krakatoa importer from Stevens Exporter, but I'm too occupied with other stuff atm.
I couldn't find a bin-exporter for Naiad either, nor is there a Partio or Alembic exporter for Naiad (-> Helge?) I know of. I'd love to stand corrected on this though.

Stefan

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Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
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keyvis digital imagery
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[Ciaran Moloney]

Partio supports .prt, but not .icecache. I'd be interested to know if anyone was able to compile the icecache patch from the good folks at Mad Crew? I couldn't get it to compile...
The PRT format is really simple and a Python script to convert particles would be pretty straightforward, especially with Brad Gabe's icecache module, but performance will blow if converting lots of points. On the other hand, if you're dealing with so many points, you should probably be rendering them directly through Arnold or 3Delight archives, or .prt with the Fury renderer....

Ciaran

        Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof

[Rob Chapman]

wait... Fury can load .PRT files?  thats a new one - very handy!

[Stefan Kubicek]

Speaking of Exocortex, I was wondering if ne1 knows anything about Mealstrom?
It was on their page up until one or two months ago but has now disappeared.
Is it no longer being developed?

Reason I'm asking is that I've been playing with PhoenixFD in Max a few days ago
and I was blown away by the simulation speed and quality of their implicit surface rendering.
From what I remember about Mealstrom it had quite a similar approach to it,
it would be awesome to get comparable functionality in Softimage. Any official info on this?

>>> ------------------------------**-------------
>>> Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
>>> ------------------------------**-------------
>>> keyvis digital imagery
>>> Wehrgasse 9 - Grï¿œner Hof

>>> 1050 Vienna Austria
>>> Phone: +43/699/12614231
>>> --- www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at ---
>>> -- This email and its attachments are
>>> --confidential and for the recipient only--
>>>
>>>
>>
>


--
-------------------------------------------
Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
-------------------------------------------
keyvis digital imagery

Wehrgasse 9 - Grï¿œner Hof

[Leo Quensel]

I was wondering the same.
I was especially interested in the exocortex surfacer and wondered if it was able to handle other types of input objects aswell.


-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Fri, 11 May 2012 12:45:23 +0200
> Von: "Stefan Kubicek" <s...@tidbit-images.com>
> An: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
> Betreff: Re: naiad particles into ICE

> >>> Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof

> >>> 1050 Vienna Austria
> >>> Phone: +43/699/12614231
> >>> --- www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at ---
> >>> -- This email and its attachments are
> >>> --confidential and for the recipient only--
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------
> Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
> -------------------------------------------
> keyvis digital imagery

> Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof

> 1050 Vienna Austria
> Phone: +43/699/12614231
> --- www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at ---
> -- This email and its attachments are
> --confidential and for the recipient only--
>

--

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[Rob Chapman]

that works a treat Cairan!  PRT to Icecache - in your face!   and a side thanks to Brad as well!

and yes of course, deferred loading is the way to go with many millions, this is for research and testing process right now and am very happy to see the Naiad particles in Softimage.


many thanks

Rob

[Rob Chapman]

Re: Exocortex Maelstrom

Was heavily testing it on a boat/sea job a year ago, unfortunately the company the commercial was for changed thier CEO just as the job finished and we had to destroy all evidence the commercial was made!   the surfacer was great yes but was a bit over the top in functionality and was a little bit too complex to get stable results easliy.  I think it was used for a series or feature film about Moby Dick.  Cairan did a really nice test with it here http://vimeo.com/17545128 There was also some issues with concave objects / level sets / bounding box areas and the surface of the water popping around. Ben Houston is the best person to comment on why it was dropped but as far as I was aware it had a lot of potential - just wasn't quite ready for production with no time or person available to finish it off back then?

heres the last thing I made with it

http://vimeo.com/20993063

cheers

Rob

[Ben Houston]

Hey Rob,

We still believe that Maelstrom's technology (surfacer + simulator)
has potential at a technological level but at the moment we don't see
an effective market opportunity in the VFX space. (We are engaged in
other fluid simulation projects though outside of the VFX space.) We
would also like to focus on fewer things to ensure that they are
completed at a high level of quality.

Best regards,
Ben Houston

--
Best regards,
Ben Houston
Voice: 613-762-4113 Skype: ben.exocortex Twitter: @exocortexcom
http://Exocortex.com - Passionate CG Software Professionals.

[Steven Caron]

i have been meaning to apply the icecache patch and give it a spin but i am way too busy.

[Leo Quensel]

That is quite understandable.
Too bad - I had my hopes up for a better meshing plugin.
While emPolygonizer is great it is still just marching cubes which has
several weaknesses.
I think there are better meshing algorithms out there by now aren't there?

Leo