Orientation of particles by curve

[john clausing]

Hello all,

I want to emit particles (rectangles) by volume from a subdivded cube deformed 
along a curve.
I want the emitted particles (they don't move) to be within this volume and 
oriented by a tangent to the curve

Basically, is there a way to "get" orientation from the curve.

thank you,

john

Re: Orientation of particles by curve

[Leonard Koch]

Get the pointtangent through closest location and plug it into the Point At
port of a Direction to rotation node and get the pointnormal through a
closest location node and plug it into the Up Vector port of the same
Direction to rotation node.
That tends to give a relatively stable result which doesn't flip much and
smoothly rotates with the flow of the curve.


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 5:49 PM, john clausing wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I want to emit particles (rectangles) by volume from a subdivded cube
> deformed along a curve.
> I want the emitted particles (they don't move) to be within this volume
> and oriented by a tangent to the curve
>
> Basically, is there a way to "get" orientation from the curve.
>
> thank you,
>
> john
>

Re: Orientation of particles by curve

[john clausing]

Perfect Leonard, thank you,

you should have seen the gymnastics i was going thru to get that done. lol

really appreciate it

john









 From: Leonard Koch 
To: john clausing ; "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" 
 
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: Orientation of particles by curve
 


Get the pointtangent through closest location and plug it into the Point At 
port of a Direction to rotation node and get the pointnormal through a closest 
location node and plug it into the Up Vector port of the same Direction to 
rotation node.
That tends to give a relatively stable result which doesn't flip much and 
smoothly rotates with the flow of the curve.



On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 5:49 PM, john clausing  wrote:

Hello all,
>
>
>I want to emit particles (rectangles) by volume from a subdivded cube deformed 
>along a curve.
>I want the emitted particles (they don't move) to be within this volume and 
>oriented by a tangent to the curve
>
>
>Basically, is there a way to "get" orientation from the curve.
>
>
>thank you,
>
>
>john

Fabric Engine at Siggraph 2013

[Paul Doyle]

Hi guys - finally have our schedule available for those that are attending
Sigg this year and would like to catch up with us.

http://fabricengine.com/2013/07/fabric-engine-siggraph-2013-schedule/

What we're showing:
Splice  - Performance enhancement
for TDs - operators running at compiled, multithreaded speeds inside Maya
and Nuke

Creation RTR  - Our real-time
renderer embedded in Maya and Max, showing hundreds of lights, soft
shadows, motion blur, DOF etc

Horde  - real-time
procedural animation ('intelligent assets') inside Maya and Softimage.
Showing how Horde can be used for previz and crowds, running heavyweight
characters in real-time.

Stage  - scene assembly
and lighting tool. We'll be showing performance on a lot of geometry and
assets, as well as tight integration with Shotgun's asset management tools.

*PARTY!* - we're co-hosting with Shotgun and a bunch of other folks. It's
on the Wednesday night, with invites going out later this week. Should be a
blast. Ping me next week if you haven't received an invitation.

Hope to see some of you there and put more names to faces :)

Thanks,

Paul

OT: Pacific Rim

[Alan Fregtman]

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
share some details with you. :)

I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of the
interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. (except
the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) We also
had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in the lab
(which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.

Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far
as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still
be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k
textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
Arnie performed like a champ.

The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 2500
separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of parts
that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we had a
rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)

On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
how he used ICE in a few other shots.

It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?

Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me"
as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static
crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid,
lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near
the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something,
but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film,
delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again,
Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.

Cheers,

   -- Alan

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Mirko Jankovic]

Cheers Alan!
Always great to show how Softimage+Arnold IS a winning solution.
There is a lot more studios than we wanna admit that uses one package of
another just because this is made with that.
Seeing "our" combo in great movies maybe will show them who is the really
boss :)
Cheers and always enjoyed your work :)
All the best and wish you a lot more projects like this, to you and your
team.
If you need someone to peek behind your shoulder and make one damn good
coffee that raise dead, just call, I'll take even that :)))


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
> share some details with you. :)
>
> I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of
> the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
> visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc.
> (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.)
> We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in
> the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
> beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.
>
> Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far
> as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still
> be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k
> textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
> Arnie performed like a champ.
>
> The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to
> 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of
> parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we
> had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
> low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
> It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
> the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
> later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
> of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
> instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)
>
> On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
> deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
> ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
> travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
> awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
> that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
> procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
> driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
> handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
> Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
> how he used ICE in a few other shots.
>
> It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
> becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?
>
> Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me"
> as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static
> crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid,
> lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near
> the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something,
> but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film,
> delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again,
> Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.
>
> Cheers,
>
>-- Alan
>
>

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Steven Caron]

was waiting on someone to stand up and take credit. great work guys!

i am hoping for some more behind the scenes? maybe with visuals?


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
> share some details with you. :)
>
>
>

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Eric Thivierge]

You don't want behind the scenes or visuals of Alan...

Great work Alan!


Eric Thivierge
===
Character TD / RnD
Hybride Technologies


On July-15-13 3:16:27 PM, Steven Caron wrote:

was waiting on someone to stand up and take credit. great work guys!

i am hoping for some more behind the scenes? maybe with visuals?


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Alan Fregtman
mailto:alan.fregt...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so
I personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore,
I wanted to share some details with you. :)

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[David Gallagher]

Congratulations!

On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I 
personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I 
wanted to share some details with you. :)


I'm the lead rigger at /Rodeo FX/ http://rodeofx.com and we did all of 
the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including 
the visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. 
(except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at 
Hybride.) We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, 
the brain in the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE 
deformations), as well as many beautiful matte paintings and a couple 
of helicopters.


Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as 
far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! 
We'd still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw 
countless ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of 
topology, and good ol' Arnie performed like a champ.


The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 
2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups 
of parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the 
end we had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one 
ass file, and low-res geo representing that segment constrained to 
some part of the rig. It then became relatively "light" to have the 
standins rigged instead of the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy 
to replace parts or textures later in the pipeline during or after 
animation. (Also caching was a piece of cake in this scenario, as we 
only needed to plot the segment nulls instead of thousands of meshes 
or pointcaching anything.)


On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE 
deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its 
ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with 
bulges travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) 
kind of awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce 
behind the brain that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done 
with strips that were procedurally curled and then if I remember 
correctly the whole thing was driven via Syflex as the brain gently 
floated. This lettuce thing was handled by another guy on this mailing 
list, my  coworker and friend Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading 
this he can give more details of how he used ICE in a few other shots.


It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 
2 becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?


Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See 
Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary 
ICE static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an 
art-directed liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the 
projected motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel 
like I probably missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were 
the main vfx vendor on that film, delivering just over 20 minutes 
worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of 
effects in ICE all throughout.


Cheers,

   -- Alan

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Alan Fregtman]

We have a nice making-of showing what we did, but it's pending clearance by
WB. I'll post the link the moment it goes public. Same goes for Now You See
Me, which is pending clearance from a different production company.

We also had some nice animated turntables showing the stilts and brain in
action which I think were neat but I'm not sure we'll be allowed to show
those. If all goes well maybe they'll use it in the extras in the bluray
release.



On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Steven Caron  wrote:

> was waiting on someone to stand up and take credit. great work guys!
>
> i am hoping for some more behind the scenes? maybe with visuals?
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Alan Fregtman 
> wrote:
>
>> Hey guys,
>>
>> A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
>> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
>> share some details with you. :)
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Tim Crowson]

Alan, I saw Pacific Rim in Imax 3D and was absolutely blown away! In my 
opinion, it's the film that is best suited for Imax 3D projection. Other 
films may be fun to watch like that, but Pacific Rim really steps it up. 
Major ass was kicked in the making of this film.


Congrats to you Alan, and everyone else at Rodeo! Impressive stuff, and 
glad to know Soft was used!


I don't really understand the naysayers complaining of thin plots. Who 
would possibly be naive enough to go see this film for any other reason 
than to satisfy the 10-yr old kid in you? It's all over the previews! 
Don't fool yourself... you know why you're there! :-D


-Tim


On 7/15/2013 2:41 PM, David Gallagher wrote:

Congratulations!

On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I 
personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I 
wanted to share some details with you. :)


I'm the lead rigger at /Rodeo FX/ http://rodeofx.com and we did all 
of the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), 
including the visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some 
digidoubles, etc. (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by 
the folks at Hybride.) We also had the chance of doing our first 
organic creature, the brain in the lab (which involved a lot of 
"gross" ICE deformations), as well as many beautiful matte paintings 
and a couple of helicopters.


Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as 
far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! 
We'd still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw 
countless ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of 
topology, and good ol' Arnie performed like a champ.


The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 
to 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid 
groups of parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" 
by the end we had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved 
as one ass file, and low-res geo representing that segment 
constrained to some part of the rig. It then became relatively 
"light" to have the standins rigged instead of the full raw geo, and 
it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures later in the 
pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece of cake 
in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls instead 
of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)


On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE 
deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump 
its ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with 
bulges travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) 
kind of awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce 
behind the brain that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done 
with strips that were procedurally curled and then if I remember 
correctly the whole thing was driven via Syflex as the brain gently 
floated. This lettuce thing was handled by another guy on this 
mailing list, my  coworker and friend Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's 
reading this he can give more details of how he used ICE in a few 
other shots.


It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 
2 becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?


Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See 
Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary 
ICE static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an 
art-directed liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the 
projected motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel 
like I probably missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were 
the main vfx vendor on that film, delivering just over 20 minutes 
worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of 
effects in ICE all throughout.


Cheers,

   -- Alan





--
Signature

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Vincent Fortin]

Congrats guys, top notch work!
I also enjoyed the film very much, it was a lot more entertaining than the
average Marvel that try to be so serious. IMHO Del Toro did a good job, you
can feel his personality throughout the humor, colors and ubiquitous
geekiness :-)


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Tim Crowson  wrote:

>  Alan, I saw Pacific Rim in Imax 3D and was absolutely blown away! In my
> opinion, it's the film that is best suited for Imax 3D projection. Other
> films may be fun to watch like that, but Pacific Rim really steps it up.
> Major ass was kicked in the making of this film.
>
> Congrats to you Alan, and everyone else at Rodeo! Impressive stuff, and
> glad to know Soft was used!
>
> I don't really understand the naysayers complaining of thin plots. Who
> would possibly be naive enough to go see this film for any other reason
> than to satisfy the 10-yr old kid in you? It's all over the previews! Don't
> fool yourself... you know why you're there! :-D
>
> -Tim
>
>
>
> On 7/15/2013 2:41 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
>
> Congratulations!
>
> On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:
>
>  Hey guys,
>
>  A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
> share some details with you. :)
>
>  I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of
> the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
> visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc.
> (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.)
> We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in
> the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
> beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.
>
>  Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as
> far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd
> still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless
> ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
> Arnie performed like a champ.
>
>  The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to
> 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of
> parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we
> had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
> low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
> It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
> the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
> later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
> of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
> instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)
>
>  On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
> deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
> ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
> travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
> awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
> that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
> procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
> driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
> handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
> Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
> how he used ICE in a few other shots.
>
>  It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
> becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?
>
>  Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See
> Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE
> static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed
> liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected
> motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably
> missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on
> that film, delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun
> intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.
>
>  Cheers,
>
> -- Alan
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Ben Davis]

I also saw it in Imax 3D, I agree a 100% with Tim, it was great to be a kid
again! And it was fun to see a few familiar names in the credits, great job!

--
*Ben Davis*
www.moondog-animation.com

+1 (423) 313 9304


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Tim Crowson  wrote:

>  Alan, I saw Pacific Rim in Imax 3D and was absolutely blown away! In my
> opinion, it's the film that is best suited for Imax 3D projection. Other
> films may be fun to watch like that, but Pacific Rim really steps it up.
> Major ass was kicked in the making of this film.
>
> Congrats to you Alan, and everyone else at Rodeo! Impressive stuff, and
> glad to know Soft was used!
>
> I don't really understand the naysayers complaining of thin plots. Who
> would possibly be naive enough to go see this film for any other reason
> than to satisfy the 10-yr old kid in you? It's all over the previews! Don't
> fool yourself... you know why you're there! :-D
>
> -Tim
>
>
>
> On 7/15/2013 2:41 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
>
> Congratulations!
>
> On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:
>
>  Hey guys,
>
>  A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
> share some details with you. :)
>
>  I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of
> the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
> visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc.
> (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.)
> We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in
> the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
> beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.
>
>  Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as
> far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd
> still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless
> ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
> Arnie performed like a champ.
>
>  The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to
> 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of
> parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we
> had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
> low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
> It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
> the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
> later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
> of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
> instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)
>
>  On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
> deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
> ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
> travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
> awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
> that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
> procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
> driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
> handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
> Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
> how he used ICE in a few other shots.
>
>  It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
> becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?
>
>  Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See
> Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE
> static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed
> liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected
> motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably
> missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on
> that film, delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun
> intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.
>
>  Cheers,
>
> -- Alan
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Cesar Saez]

Congrats to everyone involved! :D

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Ognjen Vukovic]

I haven't seen it yet, but i do plan to these days.
All i can say though is that i was blown away even by the trailers that
came out some time ago... So either way, congratulations and im looking
forward watching it.

Cheers.


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:16 PM, Ben Davis  wrote:

> I also saw it in Imax 3D, I agree a 100% with Tim, it was great to be a
> kid again! And it was fun to see a few familiar names in the credits, great
> job!
>
> --
> *Ben Davis*
> www.moondog-animation.com
>
> +1 (423) 313 9304
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Tim Crowson <
> tim.crow...@magneticdreams.com> wrote:
>
>>  Alan, I saw Pacific Rim in Imax 3D and was absolutely blown away! In my
>> opinion, it's the film that is best suited for Imax 3D projection. Other
>> films may be fun to watch like that, but Pacific Rim really steps it up.
>> Major ass was kicked in the making of this film.
>>
>> Congrats to you Alan, and everyone else at Rodeo! Impressive stuff, and
>> glad to know Soft was used!
>>
>> I don't really understand the naysayers complaining of thin plots. Who
>> would possibly be naive enough to go see this film for any other reason
>> than to satisfy the 10-yr old kid in you? It's all over the previews! Don't
>> fool yourself... you know why you're there! :-D
>>
>> -Tim
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/15/2013 2:41 PM, David Gallagher wrote:
>>
>> Congratulations!
>>
>> On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:
>>
>>  Hey guys,
>>
>>  A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
>> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
>> share some details with you. :)
>>
>>  I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of
>> the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
>> visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc.
>> (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.)
>> We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in
>> the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
>> beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.
>>
>>  Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as
>> far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd
>> still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless
>> ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
>> Arnie performed like a champ.
>>
>>  The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to
>> 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of
>> parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we
>> had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
>> low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
>> It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
>> the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
>> later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
>> of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
>> instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)
>>
>>  On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
>> deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
>> ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
>> travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
>> awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
>> that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
>> procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
>> driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
>> handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
>> Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
>> how he used ICE in a few other shots.
>>
>>  It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
>> becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?
>>
>>  Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See
>> Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE
>> static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed
>> liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected
>> motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably
>> missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on
>> that film, delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun
>> intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>
>> -- Alan
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Serguei Kalentchouk]

Congrats to everyone at Rodeo FX, really outstanding work!


-- 
Technical Director @ DreamWorks Animation

[SDK] Force ICE-Tree refresh

[Vincent Ullmann]

Hey List,

Iam looking for a way to reset/reEvaluate a ICE-Tree.
There are currently two examples were i need this.

1.)
I have a Render-Scene with some Point-Clouds reading a single icecache-file.
When i change the icecache-file on the Disk, my PointCloud wont update, 
until i reOpen the Scene or change the Frame-Input on the Cache-on-File-Node


2.)
I startet to write a Custom-Tool, wich uses the nice new Feature in 2014 
to directly write ICE-Attributes. Everything is working write now. So i 
can change a Attribute via a Python_Script or Cpp-Tool, but the Changes 
are only visible if i somehow force an Update (eg. Change something else 
in my ICETree)


I think this should be possible, but had no succes so far.

Re: [SDK] Force ICE-Tree refresh

[Sandy Sutherland]

Have you tried using a Mixer input rather than cache node?

S.

On 2013/07/15 9:54 PM, Vincent Ullmann wrote:

Hey List,

Iam looking for a way to reset/reEvaluate a ICE-Tree.
There are currently two examples were i need this.

1.)
I have a Render-Scene with some Point-Clouds reading a single 
icecache-file.
When i change the icecache-file on the Disk, my PointCloud wont 
update, until i reOpen the Scene or change the Frame-Input on the 
Cache-on-File-Node


2.)
I startet to write a Custom-Tool, wich uses the nice new Feature in 
2014 to directly write ICE-Attributes. Everything is working write 
now. So i can change a Attribute via a Python_Script or Cpp-Tool, but 
the Changes are only visible if i somehow force an Update (eg. Change 
something else in my ICETree)


I think this should be possible, but had no succes so far.

Siggraph dinner - final details

[Matt Lind]

Last night I performed a trial run to confirm how long it takes to get to Don's 
in Sunset beach from the convention center and ran into a snag - road 
construction.

S...change o' plans.

I dug into my own pocket and reserved the upper balcony to ourselves at Ralph 
Brennan's Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney.  New Orleans style cuisine with live 
jazz music played on the main floor (plenty audible from above).  We get a 
great view of the area, fireworks over the magic kingdom, and private seating 
with bar service.  However, it comes with tradeoffs.  One being I have a 
limited number of seats available.  That said, PLEASE only RSVP if you actually 
plan on attending.  Anybody and everybody is welcome to join us in the bar, but 
I absolutely need an RSVP if you want to be seated for dinner.  *If* seats 
remain vacant for dinner come Sunday, I'll invite you to fill them.  First 
come, first serve.  Humiliating contests on public display performed for 
tiebreakers. ;-)


When:
6:00 pm - meet and greet in downstairs bar
7:15 pm(ish) - seated for dinner

Space is reserved until the restaurant closes.  So relax and enjoy the evening.

Where:
Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen
Downtown Disney
URL: www.rbjazzkitchen.com

On a downtown Disney map:

-  East of 'Earl of Sandwich'

-  South of 'Tortilla Jo's'

-  Southwest of 'House of Blues'

Directions from convention center:  two options

Option A - longer scenic route, but easier to navigate:
>From convention center - head east (right) on Katella to Harbor Blvd
Head north (left) on Harbor Blvd to 'Magic Way' (or 'something' Way)
Head west (Left) on Disney way, cut through park entrances (bag inspection) to 
Magic Kingdom and California adventure
Continue west to Downtown Disney
Continue west through to far west end of Downtown Disney to Ralph Brennan's 
Jazz Kitchen
Destination will be on your left.

Option B - shorter route, but may have a few confusing points:
>From convention center - head west (left) on Katella to Disneyland Drive
Head north (right) on Disneyland Drive to 'downtown drive'
Head west (left) on downtown drive (parking lot just before monorail tracks), 
then turn towards the AMC Theatres
Head north (right) and follow the monorail tracks past the AMC theatres
Head east (right) on downtown drive to Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen
Destination will be on your right



Send all RSVP's to:

matt.l...@mantom.net

please include:
- your name
- number of guests you will be bringing
- your guests' names (if applicable)
- any special needs (dietary, handicap assistance, ...)




Matt

Re: [SDK] Force ICE-Tree refresh

[Alan Fregtman]

Putting in an If node and toggling the condition value couldn't force a
refresh?



On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Vincent Ullmann <
vincent.ullm...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hey List,
>
> Iam looking for a way to reset/reEvaluate a ICE-Tree.
> There are currently two examples were i need this.
>
> 1.)
> I have a Render-Scene with some Point-Clouds reading a single
> icecache-file.
> When i change the icecache-file on the Disk, my PointCloud wont update,
> until i reOpen the Scene or change the Frame-Input on the Cache-on-File-Node
>
> 2.)
> I startet to write a Custom-Tool, wich uses the nice new Feature in 2014
> to directly write ICE-Attributes. Everything is working write now. So i can
> change a Attribute via a Python_Script or Cpp-Tool, but the Changes are
> only visible if i somehow force an Update (eg. Change something else in my
> ICETree)
>
> I think this should be possible, but had no succes so far.
>

RE: Siggraph dinner - final details

[Matt Lind]

Doh! Almost forgot -

Each person pays for his/her own meal and drinks.  Bring cash if you can as the 
restaurant will not split the bill per person.


Matt





From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Matt Lind
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 2:10 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Siggraph dinner - final details
Importance: High

Last night I performed a trial run to confirm how long it takes to get to Don's 
in Sunset beach from the convention center and ran into a snag - road 
construction.

S...change o' plans.

I dug into my own pocket and reserved the upper balcony to ourselves at Ralph 
Brennan's Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney.  New Orleans style cuisine with live 
jazz music played on the main floor (plenty audible from above).  We get a 
great view of the area, fireworks over the magic kingdom, and private seating 
with bar service.  However, it comes with tradeoffs.  One being I have a 
limited number of seats available.  That said, PLEASE only RSVP if you actually 
plan on attending.  Anybody and everybody is welcome to join us in the bar, but 
I absolutely need an RSVP if you want to be seated for dinner.  *If* seats 
remain vacant for dinner come Sunday, I'll invite you to fill them.  First 
come, first serve.  Humiliating contests on public display performed for 
tiebreakers. ;-)


When:
6:00 pm - meet and greet in downstairs bar
7:15 pm(ish) - seated for dinner

Space is reserved until the restaurant closes.  So relax and enjoy the evening.

Where:
Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen
Downtown Disney
URL: www.rbjazzkitchen.com

On a downtown Disney map:

-  East of 'Earl of Sandwich'

-  South of 'Tortilla Jo's'

-  Southwest of 'House of Blues'

Directions from convention center:  two options

Option A - longer scenic route, but easier to navigate:
>From convention center - head east (right) on Katella to Harbor Blvd
Head north (left) on Harbor Blvd to 'Magic Way' (or 'something' Way)
Head west (Left) on Disney way, cut through park entrances (bag inspection) to 
Magic Kingdom and California adventure
Continue west to Downtown Disney
Continue west through to far west end of Downtown Disney to Ralph Brennan's 
Jazz Kitchen
Destination will be on your left.

Option B - shorter route, but may have a few confusing points:
>From convention center - head west (left) on Katella to Disneyland Drive
Head north (right) on Disneyland Drive to 'downtown drive'
Head west (left) on downtown drive (parking lot just before monorail tracks), 
then turn towards the AMC Theatres
Head north (right) and follow the monorail tracks past the AMC theatres
Head east (right) on downtown drive to Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen
Destination will be on your right



Send all RSVP's to:

matt.l...@mantom.net

please include:
- your name
- number of guests you will be bringing
- your guests' names (if applicable)
- any special needs (dietary, handicap assistance, ...)




Matt

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Graham D. Clark]

Congrats Alan! you guys did great work at Rodeo FX, and also thanks to
Hybride for getting us such well separated out holographics, so great when
elements are solid deliveries for the 3D to work out.

Alan, keep up he fight, we use Softimage for all CG Vfx additions on
features.

Graham D Clark, Head of Stereography, Deluxe 3D dba Stereo D
phone: why-I-stereo
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamclark

On Jul 15, 2013, at 12:08 PM, Alan Fregtman  wrote:

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
share some details with you. :)

I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of the
interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. (except
the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) We also
had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in the lab
(which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.

Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far
as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still
be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k
textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
Arnie performed like a champ.

The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 2500
separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of parts
that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we had a
rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)

On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
how he used ICE in a few other shots.

It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?

Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me"
as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static
crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid,
lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near
the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something,
but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film,
delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again,
Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.

Cheers,

   -- Alan

Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Upinder Dhaliwal]

Saw it in Imax3D. Awesome movie.

Congrats to everyone involved.

Cheers,
Upinder Dhaliwal
www.upinderdhaliwal.com
On 16 Jul 2013 08:29, "Graham D. Clark"  wrote:

> Congrats Alan! you guys did great work at Rodeo FX, and also thanks to
> Hybride for getting us such well separated out holographics, so great when
> elements are solid deliveries for the 3D to work out.
>
> Alan, keep up he fight, we use Softimage for all CG Vfx additions on
> features.
>
> Graham D Clark, Head of Stereography, Deluxe 3D dba Stereo D
> phone: why-I-stereo
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamclark
>
> On Jul 15, 2013, at 12:08 PM, Alan Fregtman 
> wrote:
>
> Hey guys,
>
> A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I
> personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to
> share some details with you. :)
>
> I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of
> the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the
> visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc.
> (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.)
> We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in
> the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many
> beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.
>
> Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far
> as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still
> be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k
> textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol'
> Arnie performed like a champ.
>
> The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to
> 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of
> parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we
> had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and
> low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig.
> It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of
> the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures
> later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece
> of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls
> instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)
>
> On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE
> deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its
> ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges
> travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of
> awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain
> that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were
> procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was
> driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was
> handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend
> Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of
> how he used ICE in a few other shots.
>
> It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2
> becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?
>
> Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me"
> as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static
> crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid,
> lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near
> the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something,
> but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film,
> delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again,
> Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.
>
> Cheers,
>
>-- Alan
>
>

Re: [SDK] Force ICE-Tree refresh

[Vincent Ullmann]

@Sandy:
Hmm... i kind a dont like the Mixer...  ;-)
But i will give him a try tomorrow, for the caching

@Alan:
Yes, i tried a if-node and that worked, but it doesnt seemed like the 
best Solution. :-)

Becouse i had to modify the tree.


Image, you have a Brush-like-Custom-Tool, to modify Particle-Colors. In 
that Case you need interactive Feedback, and dont want to change to much.

I tried commands like the "ResetObject()", but i didnt worked





Am 15.07.2013 23:14, schrieb Alan Fregtman:
Putting in an If node and toggling the condition value couldn't force 
a refresh?




On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Vincent Ullmann 
> wrote:


Hey List,

Iam looking for a way to reset/reEvaluate a ICE-Tree.
There are currently two examples were i need this.

1.)
I have a Render-Scene with some Point-Clouds reading a single
icecache-file.
When i change the icecache-file on the Disk, my PointCloud wont
update, until i reOpen the Scene or change the Frame-Input on the
Cache-on-File-Node

2.)
I startet to write a Custom-Tool, wich uses the nice new Feature
in 2014 to directly write ICE-Attributes. Everything is working
write now. So i can change a Attribute via a Python_Script or
Cpp-Tool, but the Changes are only visible if i somehow force an
Update (eg. Change something else in my ICETree)

I think this should be possible, but had no succes so far.

Re: [SDK] Force ICE-Tree refresh

[Raffaele Fragapane]

An if node at the bottom of the stream is actually A GREAT solution, and we
have many standard graphs built procedurally that always feature one in a
name coded compound.
Not only it allows you to force a bottom-most pull reliably at your
convenience, it also makes sure you can always reliably disable/enable
graphs procedurally at a whim without having to deal with the often
finnicky operator stack.

A compound with two ports, an if evaluated one and a pass through, costs
nothing in performance and is a great way of comforming graphs and gaining
control over their eval without going insane trying to script within the
domain of an ICE tree (which is by its nature tricky at the best of times).


On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Vincent Ullmann <
vincent.ullm...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>  @Sandy:
> Hmm... i kind a dont like the Mixer...  ;-)
> But i will give him a try tomorrow, for the caching
>
> @Alan:
> Yes, i tried a if-node and that worked, but it doesnt seemed like the best
> Solution. :-)
> Becouse i had to modify the tree.
>
>
> Image, you have a Brush-like-Custom-Tool, to modify Particle-Colors. In
> that Case you need interactive Feedback, and dont want to change to much.
> I tried commands like the "ResetObject()", but i didnt worked
>
>
>
>
>
> Am 15.07.2013 23:14, schrieb Alan Fregtman:
>
> Putting in an If node and toggling the condition value couldn't force a
> refresh?
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Vincent Ullmann <
> vincent.ullm...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hey List,
>>
>> Iam looking for a way to reset/reEvaluate a ICE-Tree.
>> There are currently two examples were i need this.
>>
>> 1.)
>> I have a Render-Scene with some Point-Clouds reading a single
>> icecache-file.
>> When i change the icecache-file on the Disk, my PointCloud wont update,
>> until i reOpen the Scene or change the Frame-Input on the Cache-on-File-Node
>>
>> 2.)
>> I startet to write a Custom-Tool, wich uses the nice new Feature in 2014
>> to directly write ICE-Attributes. Everything is working write now. So i can
>> change a Attribute via a Python_Script or Cpp-Tool, but the Changes are
>> only visible if i somehow force an Update (eg. Change something else in my
>> ICETree)
>>
>> I think this should be possible, but had no succes so far.
>>
>
>
>


-- 
Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it
and let them flee like the dogs they are!

RE: Pacific Rim

[Chris Chia]

Hi Alan,
Yea, do share with us some visuals (especially screenshot of SI in 
production)... so that we could share your thoughts with everyone here in A ;)

Regards,
Chris

From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alan Fregtman
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 3:07 AM
To: XSI Mailing List
Subject: OT: Pacific Rim

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I personally 
love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to share some 
details with you. :)

I'm the lead rigger at Rodeo FX http://rodeofx.com and we did all of the 
interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the visors, 
foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. (except the 
holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) We also had the 
chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in the lab (which 
involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many beautiful matte 
paintings and a couple of helicopters.

Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far as I 
know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still be 
rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k textures 
with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol' Arnie performed 
like a champ.

The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 2500 
separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of parts that 
moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we had a rig of 
Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and low-res geo 
representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig. It then became 
relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of the full raw geo, and 
it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures later in the pipeline during 
or after animation. (Also caching was a piece of cake in this scenario, as we 
only needed to plot the segment nulls instead of thousands of meshes or 
pointcaching anything.)

On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE deformers. 
Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its ventricles 
intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges travelling along 
its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of awesome. lol Speaking of 
ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain that was also moving a bit. 
The modeling was done with strips that were procedurally curled and then if I 
remember correctly the whole thing was driven via Syflex as the brain gently 
floated. This lettuce thing was handled by another guy on this mailing list, my 
 coworker and friend Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give 
more details of how he used ICE in a few other shots.

It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2 becomes 
a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?

Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me" as 
well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static crowd 
system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid, lockpicking, 
flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near the end and a 
few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something, but anyway, we did 
a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film, delivering just over 20 
minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of 
effects in ICE all throughout.

Cheers,

   -- Alan

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