Nyx Framework interview

Dec 02, 2014 by CGP Staff

1 |

What’s in store for the future of Nyx?

Right now we are focusing on getting features done for Nyx DBR and getting Nyx Voltron into pre-alpha. We have been trying to set small goals so they can feel achievable, for us and for our users.

We have some higher scope plans and ideas but it’s too early to discuss them, let’s talk again when we release our first products. 🙂

How did the project start and how did the three of you get involved in coding it?

Oh, that is an easy question, End User Event is the answer. But let’s go back a bit. Me, Daniel Santana and Jonathan de Blok have been active in the 3DS Max/Maxscript community for some years and also on the 3DS Max Beta, we knew and were inspired by each others’ works for quite some time.

Then two years ago I had the chance to sit down and talk to Jonathan at EUE where he told me about this project he thought of and had developed a prototype. I was blown away and thought it was super cool. I had been doing some work with network communication with my iDevCam project but this was different, even so, life kicked in and another year gone by.

Fast forward to last EUE, the three of us did a small brainstorm on how we could take that prototype into something bigger that we could share with others, and also on the best ways to actually develop as a 3 man team, which is a bit different than working solo.

Right now I’m moving to Portugal to setup You can do it! VFX as a studio for CG and Software Development along with Daniel Santana and we will be working with Jonathan de Blok on the Nyx Framework and its plugins.

Anything you’d like to add?

Actually, we do. We would like to say thanks for all the support we’ve been having from the community and our friends in the industry and take this chance to announce that a third product called Nyx Iris, another plugin for the Nyx Framework.

Nyx Iris is a virtual viewfinder that is based on a previous prototype I wrote and you can find some videos on Vimeo (video 1–video 2). It will allow you to use your tablet or smartphone to control the 3DS Max camera while streaming in realtime the viewport to the device as you can see in one of the videos. There will also be some playback/streaming specific features but I would say that its key feature is the fact you can record your movements in realtime to your 3DS Max camera, while playing back the animation of the 3D scene. This is something that big studios usually do with very expensive motion capture systems, like the ones used on Avatar and Rango. We want to be able to offer a similar virtual 3D filmmaking solution that is affordable to every user.

We will start development on Nyx Iris on January 2015, so you can hope more news by then!

Thanks!!!