The request for a “more robust fluid system” in Max, which has recently reached the top General Feature Requests list due to votes from Max users, has been marked as being “under review” by Autodesk. The comments from users ask for Bifrost integration into 3DS Max. More on Autodesk’s 3DS Max Uservoice and MUForums.
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This is the first positive sign in a long time that AD might be turning a corner. We need to keep pushing them.
Catmull Clark Subdivision Surfaces just went from ‘no status’ to ‘under review’ as well… this happened already once and went right back some months later. Let’s hope it’s not just a bug in their Feature Request system 😛
Great to see this happen!
‘Under Review’ is a very ambiguous status. It may very well be reviewed and marked down under “nah, f*ck it.”.
I know from undisclosed sources taht it was just the cleaning lady dusting over Eddie Perlbergs mouse and keyboard. Out of pure luck the Uservoice status edit screen was up when that happened…
Cleaning Lady?
What makes you think I can afford a cleaning Lady?
to be fair, the cleaning lady/keyboard technique is how i get all my best fume setups!
More robust than realflow or fumefx? That’s a tall order. But developing any kind of fluid solver/dynamics or for Max would definitely shake things up for Max. Is Bifrost strictly Maya? Perhaps it could be developed for both Maya and Max? External app that works well with both? Too many questions? Interesting…
Bifrost actually is a stand alone that integrates into Maya so integrating it into Max should not be such a problem.
You mention Realflow and FumeFX. The truth is the best fluid solvers on the market are already available for Max. I guess users really just want one they don’t have to pay extra for.
They already said that Bifrost would be standalone and mentioned other DCC apps. They demoed with Maya.
Max users did ask about it, and got a ‘Don’t hold your breath’ answer.
Now that SI is dead, maybe it’s time to re-think.
I already have Fume and Phoenix, but having something built-in (even if it’s not quite as good as those) would still be handy in those situations where buying in plugins is not an option.
They also put under review nodebased maxscript editor, now i see some hope for the max, and i am slowly starting dreaming of integration ice into it 😀
lx, ICE into Max… that’s a nice dream! I like it a lot 🙂
I like to see max and maya getting the same tools and technology with max aim for artist friendly workflow and maya more for tds/pipeline.
Ive got another interestings status: “Allow disabling unneeded plugins, stdplugs” -> Completed.
Hooray AD!
I agree with Steve. Having something that is built-in is always nice. Even if just for minor things.
I’m very curious about how many people want Bifrost because of a need vs. they are just bitter because they don’t get it as a toy. I mean, obviously it would be awesome to have naiad right there, but honestly how many people are using it for fluid sims all the time that is necessitates so much backlash?
I’m doing a fair amount of fluid sims these days (realflow). The idea of having fluids in Max is very appealing, but not if it’s something like Lagoa for Softimage. Lagoa was/is great, but a serious fluids solver it is not, at least not compared to PhoenixFD, Reaflow or Naiad. Serious fluid artists will buy a plugin/app if it falls short. It would definitely be a stellar selling point, even if most users don’t actually use it. But just having something like ICE instead of pflow would be a HUGE improvement, though I really appreciate not having to play the timeline from frame 0 to update particles.
So much to speculate on these days, let’s not get our hopes up too high…
The advantage of having something integrated would be to provide a unified solver solution, which is far more close to the current state of the art. Having something that does what FumeFX or Phoenix does won’t really change anything, nor will adding something akin to RealFlow. It makes far more sense to develop a framework that can handle liquid solvers, gas solvers, cloth and rigid solvers. Yes, I realize that is a tall order, but that’s far more of a step forward that the stop gap solution of making their own version of an existing tool. Something akin to ICE is what I’m thinking.
Sadly, I haven’t used 3dsmax in almost 4 years now, so I’m a bit behind the knowledge curve, yet I find it interesting how little seems to have changed.
LOL Brandon you haven’t missed anything and I think you know it 🙂 Nothing has really changed in 4 years. Sure stuff was added that has existed for quite some time, welcome definitely, but nothing new.
I would tend to agree with you completely, a unified system is what IS the way to do it. We have all been hacking multi sim types together painfully for years with only a couple of plugin devs pushing forward to any kind of shared resourcing.
Yeah, “Under Review” doesn’t really mean anything to me if it isn’t on a path to something real.
For me the best solution is integrated…and exposed to scripting.
Would be nice to see, but we’re still talking the 2016 version at the earliest.
Brandon – – as a name I recall from LONG ago…I must ask: what ARE you using now? Did you move to Maya? Houdini?
Really curious.
@Brandon We have new icons now.
I don’t want to start looking at the past again and how much things could’ve been different for Max, because it could very much be different, and right now I’m more interested in what’s to come, but really saying ‘nothing has really changed in 4 years’ is kind of an unfair statement, because I thought you had used Max 2014 Johnny, and I haven’t seen anybody who has used Max 2014 and hasn’t been amazed at the improved stability or performance, especially those who update from the older versions straight to 2014.
@Stark.. Even if someone doesn’t use a certain capability at one point, it still doesn’t change the fact that the opportunities it provides by being there for everyone to give it a try can make a whole lot of different for people’s career and also can create a lot of new interest and potential users for that field of work, using that package, in this case Max.
And btw, “Under Review” means a lot when it’s Eddie’s cleaning lady doing it, this lady is different from the previous ones, she knows what we need. :p
“node based maxscript editor” is also set under review…it would be awesome if they set the ik/fk solver under review to 🙂
Be addressed to Max yet
crowd
Could not support the cat
Having an integrated solution is good for small places, Its hard to convince the managers/owners to keep buying new plugins. We dont do a lot of fluids but I am sure if we had a integrated solution the artists would start integrating it into their work more.
I wonder why people want ICE but they ignore LAB or GENOME for max, which are steps into this direction and they are available for older versions as well…
SKIN , MORPHER are the most urgent things on the character animation side. IK/FK solver is okay but could use some love too of course …
Regarding the cleaning lady comment …
Thanks Eddie for bearing the joke 😉
Well MassFx is being done by Nvidia…Nvidia showed some cool water demos a few months back along with some new soft body stuff. I think this might be on the lines of possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d8-sBVkZJY and yes a unified solver system build for realtime like the PhysX stuff for Maxers seems right…Maya + bifrost good/great but takes a year, Max + hardware assisted PhysX good enough done for deadline this week LOL is my life every day. PS glad to see you back Brandon around feels like old times.
@rs can you do particle work with LAB? I think the reason people are talking about ice, is because it did particles and it seemed similar to pflow interface.
@ rs: honestly I would love to have a MoGraph tool, that would be enough already. But I guess ICE is the closest thing I could hope in case MoGraph is not an option 😉
I’m also hoping for an unified solution. I don’t know Bifrost and how it works together with rigid-body-/deformable-/cloth- and particle-dynamics.
Since Max has MassFX, mCloth and mParticles, which if I’m not wrong are based on PhysiX – maybe this is way to go.
@marco there are some pretty good tools out there now to do mograph style animation, like Animators Tool Kit and Radius. That combined with xmesh and some pflow you can do some great things
A unified solution and a better interface for cloth and massfx would be great. Also whats up with no mlcloth to mcloth collisions.?
Backburner also got an “Under Review”
@pieforme: LAB isn’t fully flexible yet, but it is in interesting approach and for example you can create WSM Space Warps so far…
@marco: It’s probably too low-level for MoGraph style tools, but well, as long as it has a small user base, it won’t grow.
Agreed with the physx comments. That would be the easiest way to go for a unified solver. Bifrost wont really unify anything but just give you fluids. It would still be the ‘max’ way of working where you hack together sims and pieces. Nvidia just released a version of apex thats got their first iteration of realtime fracturing, the fluids theyve shown are great for quick turn arounds. I really do hope massfx and mparticles do continue development towards the unified solver goal.
Not saying we dont need bifrost 😛 as long as its a whole unified system i welcome it with open arms!!
“Brandon – – as a name I recall from LONG ago…I must ask: what ARE you using now? Did you move to Maya? Houdini?”
I started using Houdini more in 2003, but bounced between that and 3dsmax until the end of 2010 – since then I’ve been at Weta using a bit of Houdini, but mostly using our in-house toolset (Synapse).
From about 1996-2005 I was very involved in the 3dsmax community, especially for VFX, but when I came back from the war in Iraq, my priorities changed and all of this awesome 3D FX stuff just became a job. I love doing it, but not enough to be so actively involved anymore. That said, 3ds, max and the community have a soft space in my heart, so I like to follow what’s going on from time to time – that’s why I’m here but you won’t see me at SIGGRAPH anymore.
Warning
If so Max wallowing
To all users on the go. Houdini
It’s time to cancel
Don’t have to pay for? Are you serious? What the hell do you think users actually HAVE been paying for, these past few years? $650 for some MassFX updates? How about those who have to buy an entirely new license of 3ds Max, just because they didn’t see anything offered the past 2-3yrs that appealed to them.
What are they getting for their $4300?
Its completely logical and fair for max users to request such feature; something that even a free software like blender have,,
Question Daashtm
Is it comparable to Maya Hair is Max?
@Brandon you should visit more often 🙂 Not many old school max FX artists come around too often.
@Don, there are those of us that pay for max and a dozen other things, this is one less expense (one of the more expensive ones too), for me anyway. All said and done I could and should be paying for Houdini for all the money I spend.
switching over software sounds easy but when it came to it how many of you would really do it? Maybe for your personal work or if you were a freelance but its kind of hard to get everybody on board at a studio. and make the switch.My boss would flip if we suggested switching even though he is aware of all the issues.
I wonder why people want ICE but they ignore LAB or GENOME for max, which are steps into this direction and they are available for older versions as well…
Because LAB or Gnome is not ICE. ICE goes from Lagoa fluids to particles to syflex cloth and all that between.
You can do a Mograph in ICE.
Maya really has a good range of facilities
But Max was too low
Nickolay411, are you referring to Nvidia’s FLEX unified physics based on their physx? It looks amazing and makes sense it could (should?) be implemented into max since physx is already there. I would think THAT should be one of the main priorities… And improve the skinning tools, xref, animation, but who’s counting.
😉