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current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 07 May 2015, 12:56
by Hirazi Blue
The question is simple: do you currently (pre-Canvas) use Fabric Engine in your projects and what specifically are you using it for? :-?

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 07 May 2015, 21:10
by forton
It's a bit on hold for the moment, I want to do ice-like stuff, so I wait for Canvas.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 10:40
by SamHowell
I've been holding on for Canvas too. Also waiting for a wider range of 3D applications to use it with.

I think some of the bigger movie studios in London have been using Fabric for quite a while now.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 10:53
by Pooby
Ive been a staunch supporter of Fabric from the outset. We commissioned them to make a tool for us a couple of years or so ago, but personally I've only dipped into Splice a little.
as here
https://vimeo.com/89710436
https://vimeo.com/89731869

Although I made some progress and found it encouraging, My lack of coding knowledge meant I was doing more searching around trying to find answers to syntax problems etc than actually making stuff, and around that time, I heard that visual programming was on the way, so I've been waiting for that. I just think its going to be far more efficient way of learning for me.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 20:00
by MauricioPC
Pooby,

Do you see a future for animation in Modo or you are going to stay making animations in Softimage? Specially facial animation. (In the context of Canvas)

Other than Maya, maybe only Max has the tools for proper facial animation?

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 21:00
by Pooby
For me, the long term future is in completely custom tools, made with fabric engine.
I'm designing everything with a realtime future in mind.
In the crossover years, I'll use Softimage, but I'm certainly not putting all my eggs in any other dcc again. I now see softimage as if it were a proprietary tool that is perfect for traditional work and one that any tools I continue to make in, can be ported over to canvas in time.
I know how to use Modo, and keep in contact with the community, but in my opinion, it's not a patch on Softimage so personally, I can't see an immediate need for it.
I haven't animated in Modo, but it seems to be something they are concentrating on improving.

For me, apart from the depressing element of people moving away and the community slowly disintegrating, the discontinuation of Softimage doesn't really directly affect me that much, as moving to Fabric was my plan anyway, and Softimage is stills as awesome as ever.
The future doesn't lie in post production it's in realtime and no DCC is appropriate for that task (except for making assets) Certainly not softimage with its crummy viewport (which I quite like, to be honest. I never look at a textured view even and just rely on Arnold ) and they all are way too slow with too much overhead , but Fabric is ideal for realtime. I've been banging on about it for years to anyone that will listen.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 21:49
by nodeway
Pooby wrote:... The future doesn't lie in post production it's in realtime...
Fully agree on this.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 21:55
by MauricioPC
Pooby wrote:I've been banging on about it for years to anyone that will listen.
I'm listening! :P

The moment Canvas is out, I'll do some solid effort and understanding it and learning it.

As for DCC's, I do need to plan how I'll possibly build a freelance workflow, so I'm testing the waters. :)

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 23:32
by luceric
If you don't have a problem to solve, I don't think you could effectively "learn" anything programming-related like Canvas. It's the type of thing you learn while trying to do something concrete. If you're more the artist-type, it's complete procrastination: To do real time content, you can pop something like Unreal, and customize it as necessary. I do music in my spare time, and although I could do this, I have not written my own MIDI sequencer, even with all the attractive Qt/MIDI APIs out there that could do 70% of the work for me. Because I'd know that while I would be debugging that track retiming code, I'm really just avoiding the harder creative task. Lots of people are writing their own tools to create some fire you could do in FumeFX, or some cloth in nCloth, in a few minutes... don't listen to these people, unless you want to become a tool developer, of course

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 08 May 2015, 23:58
by nodeway
luceric wrote:Lots of people are writing their own tools to create some fire you could do in FumeFX, or some cloth in nCloth, in a few minutes... don't listen to these people, unless you want to become a tool developer, of course
Funny, it almost sounds like if you would describe reason why we use Houdini instead of Maya. Or Softimage/ICE instead of Maya. Why write tools in MEL/Python why we could do the same with nodes in few minutes... don't listen to Autodesk, unless you want to become a application bug tester, of course. ;)

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 09 May 2015, 00:13
by MauricioPC
mantragora wrote:
luceric wrote:Lots of people are writing their own tools to create some fire you could do in FumeFX, or some cloth in nCloth, in a few minutes... don't listen to these people, unless you want to become a tool developer, of course
Funny, it almost sounds like if you would describe reason why we use Houdini instead of Maya. Or Softimage/ICE instead of Maya. Why write tools in MEL/Python why we could do the same with nodes in few minutes... don't listen to Autodesk, unless you want to become a application bug tester, of course. ;)

I don't think in this case this is fair. I think the advice Luc-Eric gave makes sense depending on what you are searching/wanting.

It appears that nowadays there's a boom for technical guys in the V(FX) market.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 09 May 2015, 00:42
by luceric
right, that wasn't about people write custom tools or not in production, it was about where you're going to spend your 10,000 hours of practice as an individual.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 09 May 2015, 16:50
by EricTRocks
We're using Fabric heavily at Hybride. Most recently and to a very large extend, for crowds. We'll share details on that when we can. It's impressive though. What I can share:

We built a rigging pipeline around Fabric Splice so we could create solvers that would run in Softimage and in the crowd tool. The solvers worked exactly the same in both. It was fun when we had to extract crowd agents back to the DCC and when you overlaid them, the geometries lined up exactly. One running in Horde, the other in Softimage. :) It's truly awesome.

We also are working on Kraken as well and used it on a feature creature in our last production. All solvers were running in Splice and the rig can build in Softimage and Maya.

Another guy at work (Ahmidou) create a hair solver that he found online with it too which we used in a few shots as well. He did it in ICE first, then re-did it in Fabric. Now we can have the hair solver available to us in any application that has Splice. :)

This was all pre-canvas. We haven't built anything with it yet since we're just coming out of production and were production locked on Splice. We're looking to it for future tools though.

A tool was also built for handling Deep Image (EXR) compositing and processing prior to that though.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 09 May 2015, 16:59
by MauricioPC
Hey Eric, that's very very interesting stuff. Hope to see more about it when you guys can share it.


As for the tools, like Kraken and the hair one, does this mean that it could be able to use it on Modo (for example) or Max? Since both will have Splice?


Cheers.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 09 May 2015, 17:09
by EricTRocks
Yes as long as the data can be pulled out of the scene and set as needed. I don't have experience with either but I don't have any reason to think it wouldn't work. Let's just say we can use them in Softimage and Maya so I'm extrapolating. This is the biggest thing that Fabric has over anything else. Portability and not having to redo work.

Re: current Fabric Engine usage?

Posted: 09 May 2015, 17:25
by Draise
Exciting.

It would be awesome to see what you all have done and have an online library of all these new functions, either for sale or free... I think the more "opensource" the compounds are, the more attractive FE would be - well atleast to take a look at what's there and can be done, how to do, or what to improve. ;) :D

When it comes to infinite lego blocks, it's hard to know what to build!