Bifrost ICE ? Verdict ?

[Sebastien Sterling]

Any of the ICErs out there see any potential in this ?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR3K301kJ45g5PEEJ9edov9-eDCeiEUhVRMAOqG3fcPmekDwW180E4oD-5M&v=_3-bKGZwdbQ

[nikaragua86]

Looks nICE, but 5 years passed, personally i went too far from ICE in my personal evolution - learned Houdini(all aspects, including vex coding), Nuke, After Effects, hadrened my skills on modeling,rendering and animation,i learned even Javascript and switched to web development )) And what now - ICE in Maya! Wow!

About the verdict - it is really nice, and i wanted system like this with all my heart for 10 years, and i will for sure use it, but Houdini is so much better - fully procedural, solid and tested for decades

compared to alien addon for Maya.

Houdini is opening your mind - showing perfectly clear the architecture of your project. Maya confuses you - its just the pile of technologies. In Houdini you go with logic and intuition - Maya is receipt based, like in Middle ages alchemy - you have to follow the steps, no logic at all, you have to learn it.

Now there is something like ICE in this pile.

People will for sure want to go deeper and go outside from Bifrost , to connect it with other Maya modules and i suspect this will be painful.

It will took years to overcome this. Why bother, when there is Houdini existing ?

Besides the ICE itself have some limitations - when it becomes really complex - it becomes really hard to work with it. So VEX snippets is the way to go.

But don`t get me wrong - looks this is really cool thing and i will definitely use it.

ср, 31 июл. 2019 г. в 08:08, Sebastien Sterling <sebastien...@gmail.com>:

Any of the ICErs out there see any potential in this ?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR3K301kJ45g5PEEJ9edov9-eDCeiEUhVRMAOqG3fcPmekDwW180E4oD-5M&v=_3-bKGZwdbQ

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[Royston Michaels]

This just got posted. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEAUdeogY3c

[nikaragua86]

This looks much better! i must admit that i was wrong with me pessemistic opinion.

ср, 31 июл. 2019 г. в 14:35, Royston Michaels <royst...@gmail.com>:

[Sebastien Sterling]

it will all depend on how much it can tank, a lot of these are very controlled exercises

[Tenshi]

Wow.. amazing use of CTRL+C/CTRL+V from ICE. Well done Autodesk.  =\

[Ben Beckett]

Its nothing like naiad its a shame. Autodesk are the problem 

[Gregor Punchatz]

No, autodesk got this right. It’s like ice and fabric engine, which is a more flexible approach than naiad . 

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[Jordi Bares]

About 6 years too late.

Jb

[Ben Beckett]

Hahahaha

[Jonathan Moore]

Autodesk got this one right and seeing as it's a single simulation tech that will power both Maya and Max (Max Bifrost Graph is in beta right now) it makes commercial sense for them too.

It's certainly no copy./paste from Softimage and is something which improves on ICE in a good may areas.

As to 6 years too late, I know Jordi can't quite believe this every time he reads it. Not everybody clicks with Houdini so it's good that Maya and Max are finally providing a node based procedural solution of their own.

[Marc-Andre Carbonneau]

In other news, Blender 2.8 officially came out yesterday.

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/

;)

[Jordi Bares]

Having options is always welcome plus I wish AD employees well, but I fail to see how AD can gain the ground lost when the high end FX, Lighting, Crowds and others are now Houdini’s domain.

Just look at the latest developments with...

Blender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnpttqFjF-4

And Houdini

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emcT5qXdUsc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR5SkChNMVs

I wish them the best though but looks like a pretty big mountain to climb…

My 2 cents

jb

[Tenshi]

...but will it crash?

The Maya-quimera will let you do healthy workflows with it?

For what the old robust ICE offers today, i don't think this will find it's way.  

Now, Houdini it's like the Zbrush of this generation.

NEW BIFROST FOR MAYA 2019.2 - NODE BASED

ICE offers right now,

[Tekano Bob]

Just snipping this thread right here. My gosh.

That was really long to get through, twice, on my phone

[Tom Kleinenberg]

Well Autodesk isn't completely blind to the reality of things, both Maya and Max are very old code-bases to support. My understanding is this is basically an external module that will plug in anywhere giving them some future-looking features.

I'm not a Maya fan but it's still the ubiquitous software option. In XSI we struggled finding production ready artists in more technical roles (riggers especially) and Maya has the hold on animation that'll be difficult to shake. I was always a "support artist" to these field, so XSI's greater flexibility while maintaining pipeline integrity was a blessing, if Bifrost brings some of that back its great.

Of course, I'd love to know what XSI could have achieved with another 6 years of development but there you go. Hats off to the devs who are working to make Maya tolerable.

On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 at 06:19, Tekano Bob <tekan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just snipping this thread right here. My gosh.

That was really long to get through, twice, on my phone

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[Jonathan Moore]

As Tom says Bifrost Graph is independent of Maya (and Max) and the UI/UX is very similar in both. Where they're significantly different is the manner in which they integrate with the Maya and Max geometry kernels. And on that basis each Bifrost Graph integration will likely end up with very different community created assets. But because the Maya and Max are so fundamentally different under the hood, assets created in each integration are not shareable with the other (certainly not community created assets).

I'd guess that the technology underpinning Bifrost Graph will also find it's way into non Media and Entertainment ADSK properties. Flow dynamics are a vital aspect of many CAD applications too. And on that basis it makes complete commercial sense that Bifrost Graph is a modular set of technologies the ADSK can leverage across they're properties. This has significant end artist benefits in the sense that ADSK can spread the development costs across different ADSK profit centres so Bifrost should evolve at a faster pace than if it were a singular module developed for Maya alone.

With regards to Houdini, I can see Bifrost Graph being used in the same pipelines as Houdini, especially now that Houdini LOP's is taking shape as a killer mix of Katana and Clarisse powered by USD.

Much like with ICE, the real value of Bifrost Graph will be the artist created assets that the Max and Maya communities share amongst themselves.

[Jordi Bares]

Thanks for the insights, that starts to make a lot more sense now, specially if there is a willingness from AD to collaborate between applications and use the technology under environments.

Jb

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[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

> But because the Maya and Max are so fundamentally different under the hood, assets created in each integration 

> are not shareable with the other (certainly not community created assets).  

Actually, a lot of things would be sharable, when you create the equivalent of an ICE compound in Bifrost.

When an app integrates Bifrost, it creates some glue code to convert geometry into the Bifrost native one (for example to use as obstacles for a particle simulation), and then everything is Bifrost native all the way up to the Arnold shader for rendering.  Unless you want the result to be converted back to app-native, which you can. The only part's that would be app-specific in a graph are geometry path names to object in the native scene, at the top level compound.   Obviously, Bifrost also generates geometry directly, particles, fluid, etc without importing them from an host application.

On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 at 07:35, Jonathan Moore <jonatha...@gmail.com> wrote:

As Tom says Bifrost Graph is independent of Maya (and Max) and the UI/UX is very similar in both. Where they're significantly different is the manner in which they integrate with the Maya and Max geometry kernels. And on that basis each Bifrost Graph integration will likely end up with very different community created assets. But because the Maya and Max are so fundamentally different under the hood, assets created in each integration are not shareable with the other (certainly not community created assets).

I'd guess that the technology underpinning Bifrost Graph will also find it's way into non Media and Entertainment ADSK properties. Flow dynamics are a vital aspect of many CAD applications too. And on that basis it makes complete commercial sense that Bifrost Graph is a modular set of technologies the ADSK can leverage across they're properties. This has significant end artist benefits in the sense that ADSK can spread the development costs across different ADSK profit centres so Bifrost should evolve at a faster pace than if it were a singular module developed for Maya alone.

With regards to Houdini, I can see Bifrost Graph being used in the same pipelines as Houdini, especially now that Houdini LOP's is taking shape as a killer mix of Katana and Clarisse powered by USD.

Much like with ICE, the real value of Bifrost Graph will be the artist created assets that the Max and Maya communities share amongst themselves.

To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 at 10:12, Tom Kleinenberg <zaga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well Autodesk isn't completely blind to the reality of things, both Maya and Max are very old code-bases to support. My understanding is this is basically an external module that will plug in anywhere giving them some future-looking features.

I'm not a Maya fan but it's still the ubiquitous software option. In XSI we struggled finding production ready artists in more technical roles (riggers especially) and Maya has the hold on animation that'll be difficult to shake. I was always a "support artist" to these field, so XSI's greater flexibility while maintaining pipeline integrity was a blessing, if Bifrost brings some of that back its great.

Of course, I'd love to know what XSI could have achieved with another 6 years of development but there you go. Hats off to the devs who are working to make Maya tolerable.

[Graham Bell]

After years of peddling roadmaps of what Bifrost was likely to become, I'm pleased they've finally got something out there. 

Yes it's taken them a while, but that's not a bad thing. And yeah it may look/feel like ICE and Fabric Engine, well that's not a bad thing either really. 

AD couldn't take any chances and drip feed the node graph over several releases, they had to get something functional and importantly, practical. Anything less than what ICE first shipped with wouldn't have cut it.

They have to really kick on now though.

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[phil harbath]

Does it do non-simulated pointcloud stuff like ICE, I looked it over however, it is different enough that is makes it hard for me to tell.  I did a lot

of motion graphics stuff with ice along with arrays of instanced shapes/geo and if it did all that I would be willing to give it a real shot.

 

thanks

Phil

[Jonathan Moore]

At the moment it's mainly about the various simulation solvers and this is the stuff where the graphs are similar between Maya and Max (we were only part of the Maya beta so I'm basing my Max comments on conversations I've had with Max folk). But the plan is to integrate things like MASH in Maya and third party plugins like the Thinkbox and Cebas stuff in Max. This will make Bifrost Graph more rounded to each particular audience.

If you take a gander on the Maya Bifrost forum you'll see some early rigging compounds being shared that are unique to Maya (to be expected, given the typical profile of Maya artists/studios). These give early indications as to the manner in which Bifrost Graph visual programming can be extended beyond the solvers. But it must be said, at the moment, beyond the typical mathematical expression type nodes, the breadth of Bifrost Graph's non solver capabilities is thin of the ground. The particles options are particularly disappointing at this stage. But I'd expect compounds to appear over time from the more technically minded artists in the community and these will hopefully make the particles feature-set more artist friendly. 

It's also worth keeping an eye on the Area downloads section as the Bifrost Graph team are sharing beta compounds that are still a work in progress.

My biggest gripe with Bifrost Graph in Maya compared to ICE is that ICE always felt like a native playground that was a natural extension of the Softimage core. In Maya, there's a lot of juggling between the Maya DG and Bifrost Graph and it's this that's catching out the less technically minded Maya artists. It's less of a problem when sticking with the main solvers (which are really great) but when attempting to be more creative beyond those solvers, you need a thorough understanding of the Maya DG plumbing.

Having said all that it's easy to forget how much ICE evolved from it's inception so I'm confident that Bifrost Graph will grow significantly over time. And much like with ICE, there will be artists that utilise the compounds that technical artists share in preference to getting their hands dirty themselves.

I'm really intrigued by the possibilities of Bifrost in Max as Max's plumbing is far more accessible to the less technically minded. Much as the Max Creation Graph is slow and clumsy in implementation  (it's still MaxScript under the hood) the underlying API is ripe for exploitation. In many ways Max is closer to Soft than Maya and over the last 4 or 5 release cycles the Max development team have made Max a far more nimble environment to work in. With the likes of TyFlow, ThinkingParticles and the Thinkbox apps, there could be some really interesting integration possibilities. And now that ADSK have seen the power of 'Indie' in terms of community building (the masterstroke was SideFX's but ADSK had to get there in the end); it's possible that Max could start building an audience in new sectors such as motion design where independent artists outside of studios are still able to punch above their weight.

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[Chris Marshall]

As I'm still on ICE this looks very interesting to me. One hurdle for switching to Houdini, for us as a very small all round shop, is the cost. Simple as that.

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[Olivier Jeannel]

@Chris, join the force, switch to H !

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[Matt Morris]

If you factor in unlimited mantra licenses it starts to even out. But it is a big jump from indie to having 2 or 3 full H lics. H Core isn't a bad price though. 

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[Chris Marshall]

I'd need the particles so we're looking at £4.5k for a seat. I have three maya here gathering dust.

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[Jonathan Moore]

I think we're increasingly in a multi DCC environment even for independence artists and this is getting easier to manage with USD. ADSK announced over Siggraph that they're going to be packaging Animal Logic's ace USD tech as a plugin for all Maya customers. This is especially great for Maya/Houdini pipelines as Animal Logic created their USD tech in part to answer the challenge of managing their pipeline across Maya and Houdini. Coupled with Solaris in Houdini, that dream of a DCC neutral pipeline is coming ever closer.

Obviously cost is an issue for independents and smaller shops but crazy as it sounds I can see some smaller outfits leaning of Houdini Core for layout/lighting etc (as long as Solaris and Karma live up to their billing) and Maya and/or Max for FX as well as general rigging/animation tasks as that route is far cheaper than Houdini FX and for all of Houdini's generalist advancements in recent years it's still a PITA for general rigging and animation (don't shoot the messenger, that's simply the feedback I continue to get).

Forgetting the relative merits of DCC's and their individual capabilities, there's surprisingly a wealth of capable options out there right now (and for the foreseeable future). Who would have predicted that when ADSK announced Soft's EOL back in 2014!