PhsX

[zandoriastudios]

6WZZARzpckw

 

 

This looks pretty incredible! Done in realtime! Can this be supported within A:M?

Developer info: https://developer.nvidia.com/physx

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX

[robcat2075]

I'm never sure how much is Phsx calculating the positions of things (very fast) and how much is the renderer taking that and creating the look of those things. You still need a fluid simulator to give Phsx something to work with, right?

[John Bigboote]

I saw that the other day... thought about asking about A:M integration. Seems that if Newton Dynamics engine can integrate into A:M something like this could too... but I know we are on a 'wing and a prayer' programmer-wise these days. I thought it looks GREAT but when you read the comments on their page there are actually a lot of people saying these tests look phoney as heck... come ON!

[robcat2075]

Here's what I'm not sure of.... Newton is a Physics engine, it calculates the position and motion of objects modeled in A:M and A:M does all the work of rendering the images after that.

 

Is Phsx just like a faster Newton? Then we need a more robust fluid simulator for it to work with.

[zandoriastudios]

Rodney, did you fix my post? How do I embed correctly?--I couldn't figure it out....

[John Bigboote]

I'm thinkin it would be something like PhysX calculates the physics on the GPU(quickly, in a pre-simulation) and supplies materials that can be altered for water color, trans, foam color etc... and then displays the frame by frame previews in your chor as you scrub or play, and then A:M would do the render when asked to... just speculating and dreaming.

[robcat2075]

Something I just noticed... in several of those demos there's a "before" and "after" version where the before looks like a sea of ping pong balls and the after is the same motion but looking more like fluid. I'm not sure what changes between the two.

[largento]

It's very impressive. Maybe the ping pong balls was an effort to demonstrate the number of points it was calculating. The white caps and movement and look of the water all look great to me. It's by far more realistic than I'd ever want.

[NancyGormezano]

Looks to me like Phsx is way more than Newton, or fluids. AND it is very NVIDIA-centric.

 

I read somewhere that Nvidia (PHSX) has been known to embed timebombs to cripple the engine's performance when any other type graphic card is present Apparently there is an arms race between nvidia and other developers to thwart NVIDIA's attempts at crippling. And there are other engines in competition with NVIDIA.

 

There are plugins (still in development?) for 3ds max and maya, do not seem to yet incorporate fluid simulation. But this I got from nvidia website:

 

The next-generation PhysX plug-in for Autodesk Maya (Version 2.86) is currently in public beta. The beta release features:

 

Rigid bodies, constraints, and ragdolls, and APEX Clothing (including soft bodies).

Separate controls for playing back the simulation, with or without Maya animation.

Ragdolls that derive collision volumes from a skinned mesh.

An updated rigid body system, providing improved control over a single body comprised of multiple shapes.

Bake simulation results to keyframes for offline rendering.

New documentation describing workflows and best practices.

Support for Maya 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 both 32-bit and 64-bit.

 

Looks like even for poly world, this "plugin" is not "plug and play".

 

I have no doubt Steffen, if he had infinite time, and the inclination, could figure something out...but to hook into one GPU manufacturer seems like a sure path to being at their mercy.

[Fuchur]

AMD has an equal technology (there was a discussion about it when the newest Tomb Raider came out, since it used AMD's engine for realtime hair-simulation called TresFX and Nvidia's cards could not do it / crashed all the time).

Again, (like with CUDA) Nvidia has developed a closed technology. AMDs one is open and has since Tomb Raider came out been adapted. There is no way Steffen will implement a technology, which is forcing people to go with one hardware manufacture over the other... (if he would, the Mac-version of A:M would be long gone... Steffen (and I am with him there very much) is for open technologies. (it does not have to be open source, but it should be adaptable by APIs and it should not be based on special hardware you need to buy.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[pixelplucker]

I would think to integrate a proprietary plug in that needs a specific card or hardware to run would limit the client base. Is there really a need for real time fluids in a program like AM or other animation packages that use a time line and key frames?

 

Updated liquids simulator in AM might be cool if you could have an N'th blob preview to pre-flight the effect then pick up the full res simulation on render time. Something similar for cloth might be nice too.