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these both tread on phoenix's feet a bit, so hopefully its not a faux pas discussing them here:
first is BulletFx..
this one is a beast.. does everything from fluids, PBD sand /granular stuff, inflatables, FEM softbodies, rigid bodies, cloth, all unified and running, gpu accelerated, on bullet solver. its like a big chunk of houdini in max.
however for my tastes, the interface is really, really too complex and unituitive to tweak and set up. and the documentiation limited to a few videos. its easy to tweak a wrong value and lock it up.
if he (Ben) can sort out the interface to a more "3dsmax" level and less "houdini without the node editor" it could be a killer fixer-upper for max's poorly neglected dynamics.
there is a free demo here:
http://www.alphavfx.com/bulletfx.html
and the guy is quite responsive to emails.
second, and equally interesting is Lucid.
https://ephere.com/plugins/autodesk/max/lucid/
covers most of the same bases as BulletFx, but currently much more limited (its in betatesting)
interesting because its based on nvidia's amazing new Flex realtime particle based dynamics system, so in theory, should be much faster than other older solvers, and runs almost entirely on gpu.
unfortunately thats also its biggest weakness, since he (Marcel, very nice guy) is limited by the capabilities of a system not currently designed for offline high detail work.
my experience is that the interface is very nice, and you can get results very fast. but
a) as you crank the detail, it slows drastically
b) it has a mystery particle limit around 1.3 million particles. you can set it higher, but despite having loads of gpu ram free, it crashes the gpu driver. this is something Marcel obviously wishes to address but is dependent on nvidia for updates to Flex.
c) it has various other limitations that may well be eased with flex updates ( FE. global setting for viscosity, rather than per fluid, or variable within a fluid. as with bulletfx. )
tldr, feels like a cool toy that could become a proper tool if nvidia choose to allow it.
i like that people are trying to fill the gaps autodesk cant be bothered to fill.
first is BulletFx..
this one is a beast.. does everything from fluids, PBD sand /granular stuff, inflatables, FEM softbodies, rigid bodies, cloth, all unified and running, gpu accelerated, on bullet solver. its like a big chunk of houdini in max.
however for my tastes, the interface is really, really too complex and unituitive to tweak and set up. and the documentiation limited to a few videos. its easy to tweak a wrong value and lock it up.
if he (Ben) can sort out the interface to a more "3dsmax" level and less "houdini without the node editor" it could be a killer fixer-upper for max's poorly neglected dynamics.
there is a free demo here:
http://www.alphavfx.com/bulletfx.html
and the guy is quite responsive to emails.
second, and equally interesting is Lucid.
https://ephere.com/plugins/autodesk/max/lucid/
covers most of the same bases as BulletFx, but currently much more limited (its in betatesting)
interesting because its based on nvidia's amazing new Flex realtime particle based dynamics system, so in theory, should be much faster than other older solvers, and runs almost entirely on gpu.
unfortunately thats also its biggest weakness, since he (Marcel, very nice guy) is limited by the capabilities of a system not currently designed for offline high detail work.
my experience is that the interface is very nice, and you can get results very fast. but
a) as you crank the detail, it slows drastically
b) it has a mystery particle limit around 1.3 million particles. you can set it higher, but despite having loads of gpu ram free, it crashes the gpu driver. this is something Marcel obviously wishes to address but is dependent on nvidia for updates to Flex.
c) it has various other limitations that may well be eased with flex updates ( FE. global setting for viscosity, rather than per fluid, or variable within a fluid. as with bulletfx. )
tldr, feels like a cool toy that could become a proper tool if nvidia choose to allow it.
i like that people are trying to fill the gaps autodesk cant be bothered to fill.
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