updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

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emFluid 5Author: Eric Mootz
v.5.100 updated Dec 21st 2017 — as of now, all of Eric's plugins including emFluid5 are available for free.

From the emFluid5 documentation: This plugin for Softimage|XSI's ICE is a highly versatile tool for manipulating 3D grids. It contains, amongst many things, a fluid solver for creating fire and smoke effects. [..] A grid is the primary "working element" of an emFluid5 simulation. It represents an area of space which has been divided into cells, as determined by it's FBox. Each cell of the grid is a voxel, and it can contain scalar or vector data. Scalar cells contain a single numeric value, while vector cells contain a set of 3 values which can represent colors, UVWs, velocity etc. How the values of a grid are used is up to the artist - they can be used to adjust and interact with values in another grid, or sent to the viewport or shaders for rendering, they can be used to move particles or points on geometry, or anything else. This open nature of emFluid5 is a great strength - fluid simulations are not the extent of it's usefulness. For instance, when used in conjunction with tools like Softimage's internal polygonization, emTopolizer, emPolygonizer, etc. artists can use grids to model (or grow) organic shapes.

Some Features: 3rd generation multithreaded solver Resumable simulation OpenVDB support, can be rendered in any renderer supporting OpenVDB (Oleg Bliznuk's OpenVDB ICE toolkit can be used) Single, multiple or automatic fluid boxes Particle advection Fluid boxes can be translated/rotated/scaled during the simulation Fluid boxes and grids have full operator stack access Data emission from nearly any object type (meshes, nurbs, curves, point clouds, ..) Automatic creation of a emFluid setup based on the current selection Combustion of Fuel and custom particle types for Flame, Smoke and Waste Data grid based particle emission or "normal" particle emission ... or both at the same time An "open" solver, meaning the internal grids and data are exposed in a way so that you can enhance the pre-built compounds and functionality with own compounds Velocity can be generated directly ("velocity emission") or indirectly ("combustion", "buoyancy", "expansion") or by using a combination of both Point clouds that use emFluid4 are still just "ordinary" point clouds meaning they can be cached and rendered just as any other point cloud The internal 3d fluid grids of emFluid can be directly meshed with emPolygonizer

Some videos from recent releases: emFluid5 5.055 - Sneak Preview / V-Ray 3.0 for Softimage and the emFluid5 support / emFluid5 v.5.049 - Sneak Peak / Walk Through the new Renderer / emFluid5 5.000 beta Tutorial 11. Many more videos on the download page. Also, for some test videos, see the si-community thread linked below.
emToolsAuthor: Eric Mootz
v.1.97 updated Dec 21st 2017 A huge grab-bag of heavily production tested helpers and tools for ICE (Used in productions such as »Wrapped« »Pirates« and »Genesis«). The latest update adds the following compounds: Image Reader/Writer: Reads/writes images from/to arrays of positions and colors, development sponsored by SI artist Oliver Weingarten Create Particles from Image: creates particles based on an input file Get XSI Home Path: gets project/user/factory path as a string for use with the new Image Reader/Writer nodes Liquid Particle Killer: prunes isolated particles Per Point to Per Node Color: provides context conversion of color from point to node (sample) Calculate Normals from Positions: computes a local particle normal for further processing.

Don't miss the usage demo emTools 1.96 — New Stuff. For the full list of more than a hundred items see the emTools instruction page on mootzoid.com and the download link below. Demo scenes showing the usage of a lot of the nodes are available on Eric's site.

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Mootzoid
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updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 24 Feb 2015, 18:36

Hi there!

A few updates were released today and, more importantly, emFluid5 is now open beta.
I have the flu, so please forgive me for being lazy and only copy/pasting today's newsletter here ;)

Updates:

New versions of emFlock2, emNewton2 and emRPC4 are available.
The multithreading has been revised and things simulate/render a bit faster than before.

A new version of emTools is available with the following main new features:
  • new compounds "Image Reader/Writer" and "Create Particles from Image" (X).
  • new compound "Liquid Particle Killer" (including a demo scene).
  • new compound "Calculate Normals from Positions".
  • new compound "Per Point to Per Node Color".
  • new compound "Get XSI Home Path".
  • a few bug fixes.
(X) the development of the ICE/image tools was sponsored by mister si-community himself, Oliver Weingarten a.k.a. "owei" .
Many thanks for the support, owei! :ymhug:

Note that if you are working with Softimage 2015 or Softimage 2015 SP1 then you should definitely update the addons to benefit from a bug fix in the Softimage ICE SDK!


emFluid5 beta (Softimage):

As of today, anybody can download and try the beta of emFluid5 for Softimage.
Real volumes for Softimage, yay!

The addon, a few demo scenes and links to tutorials can all be found on the emFluid5 web page (scroll down to see the links to the tutorials).
The emFluid5 documentation is, ahem, a bit lean, but if you want to dive deeper into emFluid5 and need some support then let me know and I will sign you up to the Mootzoid beta list (i.e. a private Google group) where you can get help from experienced emFluid5 users who have been using the beta for several years.
Finally, if you are interested in purchasing or upgrading to the new emFluid version, please get back to me via email.

Cheers,
Eric

PS: some old emFluid5 tests made during the development.














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Daniel Brassard
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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Daniel Brassard » 24 Feb 2015, 20:53

Hi Mootzoid, looking good.

Did you catch the flu working on a fluid solver? =))
$ifndef "Softimage"
set "Softimage" "true"
$endif

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Bullit » 24 Feb 2015, 20:54

Very nice and get well!

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 24 Feb 2015, 20:59

@Daniel: hehe, veeeery funny :)

@Bullit: thanks!

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by FXDude » 24 Feb 2015, 21:48

Both renders and OpenGL previews are just awesome (!)

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Draise » 24 Feb 2015, 22:47

Woah. And... free to try!? Incredibly generous!

Can't wait to somehow make time to learn this. Lovely stuff.

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 25 Feb 2015, 13:04

Thanks for the kind comments, guys!


A frequently asked question regarding emFluid5 and its volumes is "how can I render the volumes?".

Here a list of currently available render solutions:


1. first of all there is the volume renderer that is shipped with emFluid5, i.e. the "emFluid5 Renderer".
Here some video tutorials regarding the renderer:
https://vimeo.com/76603983
https://vimeo.com/77155981
https://vimeo.com/79555909
https://vimeo.com/90211577


2. you can use the shaders from Holger Schoenberger (Binary Alchemy) and render with Mental Ray or Arnold. Please contact Holger directly if you wish to use his shaders.


3. the emFluid5 3D grids (i.e. the volumes) can be cached using the OpenVDB file format (.vdb). Latter can then be used within Houdini, Arnold and any other renderer (or DCC) that supports OpenVDB.
For Softimage and Arnold you can also check out Oleg Bliznuk's excellent OpenVDB tool.


4. the latest V-Ray 3.0 for Softimage supports emFluid5 and its internal grids. Easy going, real volume rendering!
Here a quick video tutorial: https://vimeo.com/107616068


Cheers!
Eric

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Rez007
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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Rez007 » 25 Feb 2015, 19:41

Nice work Eric. Everything is looking great!

Also nice to see the continued support for Softimage. :)

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 25 Feb 2015, 19:55

Also nice to see the continued support for Softimage.
Why wouldn't I continue to support Softimage? It's functioning beautifully, way better than all other apps I know.
Did I miss something?? ;)

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Rez007 » 25 Feb 2015, 22:19

Mootzoid wrote:
Also nice to see the continued support for Softimage.
Why wouldn't I continue to support Softimage? It's functioning beautifully, way better than all other apps I know.
Did I miss something?? ;)
uh no...it was meant as a compliment and a general statement to your continued support, as not everyone is doing what you have done and continue to do.

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 25 Feb 2015, 23:54

Hey Rez007, I was just kidding!

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Pooby » 26 Feb 2015, 13:19

Hi Eric,

your Em Image nodes ( which look potentially really useful, so thanks).. What file formats will it take? I can't seem to get anything to work.

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 26 Feb 2015, 13:48

@Pooby: the image reader node supports Softimage .pic, TARGA .tga, OpenEXR .exr and SGI .sgi

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Pooby » 26 Feb 2015, 14:47

Thanks.. I finally got TGA to work. It had to be 24 bit and above.

Is there a way of writing an image sequence ?

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 26 Feb 2015, 15:23

@Pooby: of course you can write sequences. Just build your own filepath with a fileindex or something like that.

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Re: updates and stuff (e.g. emFluid5 beta)

Post by Mootzoid » 26 Feb 2015, 15:59

Hey guys,

here a short video tutorial in which I show the main new things of the emTools update:


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