Nvidia FLEX in 3ds Max!

[KristofferHelander]

Integrate the unified PhysX technology called FLEX into 3ds Max and Particle Flow in order to simulate different types of physics in the same system, here are some examples.

•Liquids (water, goo)
•Granular materials (sand, dirt)
•Environmental cloth (flags, newspapers)
•Rigid bodies (environmental debris)
•Soft bodies (inflatables / tetrahedral meshes)

Check out this live demonstration and don't miss the WATER BALLOONS at 2:45! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF1_Lo3Z3G4

Here is some more info from PhysXinfo.com
http://physxinfo.com/news/11860/introducing-nvidia-flex-unified-gpu-physx-solver/

[hristo.velev]

The trouble with this is that game tech will always be optimized for real time, and Max is not a real-time platform. Most often you need a much higher quality results, which real-time tech can't deliver.

[RGhost77]

In MCG partly added Bullet physics. I think Bullet would be better than PhysX.

[Anonymous]

To what hristo.velev said, it should be also noted that Nvidia Flex particle amount is limited by the VRAM of your graphics card.

[Swordslayer]

There's Lucid Physics for 3ds max from Ephere, powered by NVidia Flex, having something like that as part of max by default would be great.

[michael_spaw]

What would you use the tools for? Specific examples would be great to have here.

[KristofferHelander]

@michael_spaw That's like saying: "What would you use 3ds Max for?" EVERYTHING beyond your wildest imagination of course. FLEX is a unified simulation system that integrates features that are only provided by separate modifiers or systems right now (Cloth modifier, MassFX, Particle Flow, Flex modifier, etc.), having a unified particle/dynamic system would be much more flexible and open upp opportunities; like having fluids freeze into a solid rigid body and continue simulating, having cloth simulating a bag of water (with a gold fish in it 🙂 ), making a cereal commercial with fluid and rigid body simulation working together. If you need more examples I have actually listed several of them in the original post, did you miss that?

@hristo.velev I agree that this technology might not be good enough for large scale Hollywood VFX final production (not yet at least), but they have Bifrost for that. But this technology might be super useful for small studios that can buy some extra GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, but can't afford a complete fluid simulation server farm, for doing simulation for motion graphics, and commercials, or more simple cartoony types of things where full scale fluid simulation might not be necessary.

[KristofferHelander]

It looks like the latest version of FLEX has Direct3D 11 and 12 support, so you don't actually need a CUDA card, but I would imagine that the performance would be much better if you do use CUDA.

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-flex-110-released

[hristo.velev]

With the limited resources of the Max team, especially in a traditionally overlooked area like dynamics, it's hardly wise to develop two parallel systems.

[hristo.velev]

You could take a look at Lucid which implements Flex in Max already - https://ephere.com/plugins/autodesk/max/lucid/

We own a license and it's very handy for some scenarios, check it out.

[KristofferHelander]

@hristo.velev Yupp, I've seen Lucid, it looks fantastic! 🙂 Well, if they integrate Bifrost and make it GPU-accelerated and a unified dynamics system, I'm opened to that as well. But they are already using PhysX in Max for MassFX and the integrated Box #2 plug-in to PFlow, so why not keep going and keep expanding PFlow to make it an even more powerful particle system. So that there is only one unified dynamics system in Max (FLEX) rather then multiple ones (Cloth modifier, MassFX, PFlow operators, Bifrost, Flex modifier, etc.). With both FLEX and the Data Operators in PFlow it's shaping up to be a really powerful particle system, combine that with FumeFX or Phoenix FD, or Krakator, Stoke, etc. magical! 🙂

[hristo.velev]

Yeah, I wish there were more dynamics development in Max too 🙂

[KristofferHelander]

@Kelly_MichelsCould you please specify what "Future Consideration" actually mean?

[electrotoast_old]

@KristofferHelander It means exactly what it says. 🙂 We're not saying yes, but at this time, we're also not saying no. Honestly though, unless it says "Implemented" there's always a chance it could be Archived.

From the guidelines post:

Future Consideration: While we’re generally a fan of these ideas, the timing isn’t quite right for development consideration. As such, they are being put on the back burner to be re-visited at a later date. Please continue to comment and add your support. Check out the full guidelines here.

[KristofferHelander]

Thanks for the link to the guidelines, I've missed that before. That helps! 🙂

[electrotoast_old]

You're welcome! That's what we're here for. Sorry it took so long to respond. 🙂

[Tochukwunwankwere20]

has this been implemented?

[Tochukwunwankwere20]

hi, has this been implemented?

[electrotoast_old]

No it has not. Please ignore for now. We’ve unfortunately had a bug where our “Future Consideration” status had changed to a second “Implemented”.