Phoenix/Volume Breaker/Rayfire etc

[m_hinks]

Hi,

I'm about to buy a copy of Volume Breaker from Cebas, but the more I research into it, I wonder whether it's the right plugin. I want to beable to simulate buildings crumbling and falling down, as well as other distruction of random objects such as lamp posts or benches. But I dont know if Phoenix can do this. I know if can do smoke and water etc and if it can do more solid object effects then its a bonus.

I've seen Rayfire and that does look good too, but never had the chance to use it.

The main reason I ended up at Volume Breaker first is that it comes with a copy of ScalpelMAX which I was about to buy anyway.

Does anyone have any strong views on which would be the better buy, and the advantages of one over the other?

Many thanks,

Mark

[instinct]

Hey there,

VolumeBreaker will not simulate your buildings or objects crumpling down at all. It will fracture your objects into volumetric pieces, that's it. If you make them fall down using Thinking Particles or reactor or physx does not matter, but Volume Breaker will not do that for you.

Phoenix can not do rigid body dynamics nor fracturing (and i doubt that it will, because it is beyond the scope of a fluid simulation plugin (smoke and explosions are also fluid simulations in that regard)

Long story short i would suggest going for Rayfire:
It is a strong rigid body simulation tool (it does not use its own solver, but reactor or physx)
It comes with strong a nicely artist directable fracturing tools
Does automatic impact based subfracturing (piece of concrete hitting the floor beeing shattered again)

Kind Regards,
Thorsten

[m_hinks]

Nice one Thorsten,

I will take a look in to Thinking Particles, as hasn't Reactor been removed in 2012? I guess Physx is as good though.

I will have to see if I can get demos of Rayfire and Thinking Particles and see which works the best for us. I guess you still need VolumeBreaker to do the fracturing before Thinking Particles?

Rayfire does seem to be a good all in one rigid body simulation tool from youtube videos. I like the impact based subfracturing. Can see a need for that in a couple of projects!

Mark

[sandykoufax]

And this is another option to consider.
http://www.pulldownit.com/

[instinct]

Thinking Particles is a very powerful system. It has a pretty steep learning curve tho. And yes with TP you would need VolumeBreaker to fracture your objects unless you are happy with the free tools out there (see scriptspot).

I am not sure if the current versions of RayFire still support reactor at all. Physx is definitely the better choice there i guess.

Thinkin Particles can do a lot more beyond destructional effects, but in turn the price point is a bit daunting compared to rayfire. You can get a rayfire license for 325$ while you need to shove out nearly 2500$ for Thinking Particles + Volume Breaker. If you really only need destruction then setup and usage will also be a lot more straight forward.

Regards,
Thorsten

[joconnell]

A second vote for rayfire. You get volume breaker included inside of thinking particles 4 but it's not really accessible from outside of tp as a general purpose fragmenter. Also volume breaker has a fraction of the methods of breaking than rayfire has as Thorsten has mentioned, so a lot of artists will pre break with rayfire and feed that into thinking particles for the setup and sims.

[m_hinks]

Thats all sounds very good for Rayfire I think.

Do either of you know how the licencing works with a single lic, networked or restricted to one machine? Ill send them an email and find out.

[Morne]

Thats all sounds very good for Rayfire I think.

Do either of you know how the licencing works with a single lic, networked or restricted to one machine? Ill send them an email and find out.

let us know what you find out please

[m_hinks]

I have spoken to the developer, and the licensing is to single machines not floating at this point.

There is a full demo with 30 trys on their website.

Because the sim is baked into the geometry as keyframes, the file will open in other machines without the plugin, and also netrender fine.

Waiting till Monday for the latest version for 2012 before trying out more.

[BBB3]

I don't own RayFire but I have Orbaz's PFlow Toolbox #2 and I would be a little wary of any plug that relies heavily or solely on PhysX. Nvidia's developments of the PhysX tools for Max has been incredibly erratic. Every new version for quite a while now has had fewer features than the previous one and the latest version was apparently plain broken (RayFire even warns against using it on its website). This is a particularly big deal if you use Max 2012 because MassFX considerably limits what RayFire can do (no interactive demolition, which kind of defeats that whole purpose) and it will not allow you to use Reaktor as a fallback. A fix has been promised by Nvidia as imminent since early May.

[stevesideas]

Yep, I have to confirm what BB3 is saying. I bought rayfire and it works fine with max 2011.. physx plugin installed etc, but with max 2012 there is no full support by physx for all the features in rayfire. A lot of people are waiting for an update....

[m_hinks]

I'm testing Rayfire at the moment, and does seem there are some issues that will be fixed with the new PhysX update.

But overall seems very easy to use and quick.

[glorybound]

Did you decide? I went to Rayfire's site, but my office web filter blocks it for malware.

[lukx]

Yep, I have to confirm what BB3 is saying. I bought rayfire and it works fine with max 2011.. physx plugin installed etc, but with max 2012 there is no full support by physx for all the features in rayfire. A lot of people are waiting for an update....

Nvidia PHYSX update for 2012 is coming next week. (direct news form rayfire creator)

[wxyz]

Great news. All those polys need 2012.