What's gonna be new in V.19

[Elm]

Hi Freaks!

 

I wondered if someone already knows what new features AM V.19 will have?

 

Best,

Elm.

[robcat2075]

A significant item will be "Bullet" physics replacing "Newton"

[detbear]

I wonder if there will be any move in the Render Area that allows for export to engines like Octane.

 

ALSO: I wish that the MAT CAP shader plugin would be included in the list.

[robcat2075]

ALSO: I wish that the MAT CAP shader plugin would be included in the list.

 

For that, the code for the plugin would have to be made available to Hash . Anyone from Soul Cage reading this?

[Elm]

Hi!

 

The matcap plugin is free anyway. It's only available for windows though (32/64 bit). Willi told me that he cannot compile it for macintosh systems. Yoda has the code for it, maybe he finds the time to compile it.

The latest plugin should run in V19 without problems (hopefully).

[Willi]

some wishes:

-ability to implement third party renderers via sdk

-sun/sky system for the renderer

-faster raytraced ambient occlusion (maybe through gpu computing?) (NOT SSAO)

-true mutithreaded rendering (not instances) and bucket rendering

-better cp weighting editor, maybe paint weights

[robcat2075]

What is bucket rendering?

[John Bigboote]

Bucket rendering is what C4D has... where the render screen is divided up into a series of buckets (an adjustable grid) and I think individual processors concentrate on individual buckets... SPEAKING of C4D, at Siggraph they announced the release of C4D R18... so it is IMPERATIVE that we move on to V19!!!

 

There is a whole slew of 'wish list' features I dream of... We need to stay grounded for Yoda's sake.

[detbear]

VUE also has the option of "Bucket Rendering."

[robcat2075]

 

-ability to implement third party renderers via sdk

 

I suppose a first step would be a list of things currently not in the SDK that are needed to do this.

[Willi]

@bucket rendering

this has to do with multithreaded rendering and memory managment. the render screen is devided in little rectangles(buckets). every processor/thread then takes a bucket to render the image.

 

@third party renderers

maybe this would never be possible, because of hash-splines...

i think/guess the am-renderer uses its own primitive type (hash-splines) to determin ray-intersections...

most of free open-source renderers, like luxrender, mitsuba, pbrt, appleseed, etc, uses ray-triangle-intersection methods...

[detbear]

According to a post by Gerald(I think it was him), the Luxrender architecture could potentially work. But

I don't know all the details. I have used "Lux" in the past with other Apps and it had some decent results.

[robcat2075]

Currently, the path to using another renderer is to export an OBJ series or an MDD (point cloud?), right?

 

 

 

We had something like bucket rendering in v14 (it was horizontal strips rather than a grid) but it gave inconsistent results in complicated scenes.

[Willi]

just had a quick look at the source of luxrender and it provides a lot of primitive shapes like polymeshes, nurbs, catmullromsplines, spheres, nurbs, etc...

the hash-splines primitive shape could be implemented in this "shape" class i think, for a programmer...but i think that the hash-splines are licensed, so not open source...

the only thing that maybe could work is to convert the hash-splines to polymesh via "IEPoly" with "adaptiv" option...resulting in very very high triangle counts...

[Willi]

just found jpatch source code. jpatch is also a spline modeller that can import am models and convert it to other polymesh formats...

in the source code there are some hash-patches shape descriptions...all java...

 

https://svn.code.sf.net/p/jpatch/code/trunk/jpatch/src/jpatch/

[robcat2075]

I wonder if there will be any move in the Render Area that allows for export to engines like Octane.

Short answer: currently there's nothing in the alphas about a new renderer.

 

I think to make that happen someone will need to be recruited who completely understands how A:M does what it does in every way and also completely understands how your target renderer does what it does in every way and can program fluently in both of them. And that person would have to have a lot of time available.

[robcat2075]

just had a quick look at the source of luxrender and it provides a lot of primitive shapes like polymeshes, nurbs, catmullromsplines, spheres, nurbs, etc...

the hash-splines primitive shape could be implemented in this "shape" class i think, for a programmer...but i think that the hash-splines are licensed, so not open source...

the only thing that maybe could work is to convert the hash-splines to polymesh via "IEPoly" with "adaptiv" option...resulting in very very high triangle counts...

 

 

I recall Martin has said in the past that A:M converts the spline patches to polygons at render time: Perhaps part of what you need is already inside A:M.

[pixelplucker]

Infini-D had bucket rendering. I remember running a render while I was on vacation for 3 weeks and came back only to see artifacts and missing blocks.

AM's render is pretty nice. Not sure how Electric Image does theirs but they are still one of the quickest and the quality is superb.

My wishlist:

Preserve model units on export for STL and obj if the possible.

[Roger]

I can think of some things I'd like to see:

 

GPU rendering/acceleration (but I think this has already been noted as being impractical so not going to happen most likely)

Support for massively multi-threaded systems (or do we have this already?)

Some sort of auto-rigging, at least for humanoid/bipedal characters (probably also a moonshot)

 

 

How exactly does bullet physics differ from Newton?

[robcat2075]

I can think of some things I'd like to see:

 

GPU rendering/acceleration (but I think this has already been noted as being impractical so not going to happen most likely)

Support for massively multi-threaded systems (or do we have this already?)

Both previously tried with little success.

Some sort of auto-rigging, at least for humanoid/bipedal characters (probably also a moonshot)

 

 

The moon shot was easier.

 

 

How exactly does bullet physics differ from Newton?

 

 

Here's an overview of Bullet.

[detbear]

I'm sure Bullet Physics will be a nice addition, but rendering is much more of a need in my pipeline. And it seems

as though the simulation of Bullet physics will need a more robust render option if the objects are numerous. Or at

least it seems like that would be the case.

 

Rendering is the number one need for my pipeline. At the same time, AND IN A:M's defense, I totally understand how

difficult of a challenge this is.

[jakerupert]

better viewport / realtimerendering would be great. (See C4d 18)

[John Bigboote]

topping my 'wush-lust' would be a real(not faked or screen-spaced) Ambient Occlusion feature that renders swiftly enough to use regularly.

 

alternate renderer-wise... we are awaiting Xtaz(Marcos) who has an A:M to C4D/Octane render pipeline in the works... also- recently a A:M to Blender/Cycles workflow has been established... awaiting some sample-renders from anyone or a tutorial on the process... don't know how successful that is.

[zandoriastudios]

Is Bullet physics being beta/alpha tested in A:M now? Is there a thread about that?

 

I would love to just select a group and have automatic dynamic options like for jiggle, or have something like a chain that is a part of a model automatically simulate in a choreography. Newton is hard to do something reusable, when it is so complicated to set up and build it in the choreography...

It would just be awesome if you could select a group in the model and then set it's properties for dynamics, cloth,soft bodies, hard bodies, etc. and then have everything simulated later in the choreography, And it would work everytime you drop that character into a choreography ( no need to tweak, redo, or recreate).

[robcat2075]

Is Bullet physics being beta/alpha tested in A:M now? Is there a thread about that?

 

It's in the alpha. I personally have not delved into it yet as I don't know much about Bullet and I've been distracted by other bugs.

 

Here's the properties screen:

 

 

 

I was about to try a a simple default attempt at some bullet physics but the button to start it seems to have disappeared in the latest alpha I have.

[Xtaz]

Currently, the path to using another renderer is to export an OBJ series or an MDD (point cloud?), right?

you are completely right... and it works pretty well, but the user needs another 3d software to render it,

the magic trick to export directly to Standalone Octane is to program an alembic file exporter

[Fuchur]

 

Is Bullet physics being beta/alpha tested in A:M now? Is there a thread about that?

 

It's in the alpha. I personally have not delved into it yet as I don't know much about Bullet and I've been distracted by other bugs.

 

Here's the properties screen:

 

Bullet.PNG

 

 

I was about to try a a simple default attempt at some bullet physics but the button to start it seems to have disappeared in the latest alpha I have.

 

 

Not everything is functional till now as Steffen already stated...

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[robcat2075]

Here we go... here's an initial attempt at "Bullet" physics.

 

clip4016BulletPhysics.mov

[Rodney]

Looking good Robert.

[John Bigboote]

THANKS for the demo Rob--- Looks a lot like Newton does- settings wise. I noticed you had no need to set the floor object as a collidor body as you would with other dynamics engines. I am very interested in that 'Bullet Joint' setting... that should be cool! MIGHT be the key to being able to do 'ragdoll-physics'... where you could animate a character to a pose at (for example) a top of a staircase and then let the physics do the falling actions... for some bizarre reason- I would LOVE to do that!

 

For a quick test- what happens if you click 'YES' on that- do more options open up?

[robcat2075]

I noticed you had no need to set the floor object as a collidor body as you would with other dynamics engines.

 

 

 

Apparently, everything is a Bullet "Static Object" by default, but you can set that to OFF if you want it to be ignored.

 

 

I am very interested in that 'Bullet Joint' setting... that should be cool! MIGHT be the key to being able to do 'ragdoll-physics'... where you could animate a character to a pose at (for example) a top of a staircase and then let the physics do the falling actions... for some bizarre reason- I would LOVE to do that!

 

For a quick test- what happens if you click 'YES' on that- do more options open up?

 

 

I've tried messing with them but not enough to understand if it's working right or if I'm doing it right.

 

 

 

 

 

I'll also note that the position of the bone seems to indicate the center-of-gravity and odd effects occur if it is outside the mesh.

[John Bigboote]

Hmmm. yeah- will take some investigating...