Hi guys,
We wanted to share with you some of the work that Phil Taylor has been working on with ICE. Due to family commitments, Phil is currently travelling and can’t be with us at SIGGRAPH to show these in person, so he recorded these videos to show what’s possible with ICE.
About Phil TaylorPhil Taylor is the Head of Animation at Softimage. Prior to working at Softimage, Phil developed CAT, a plug-in for 3ds Max for rigging characters easily. The company was acquired by Softimage in 2006 and Phil now lives and works in Montreal.
Phil’s interest in programming came from a desire to do new and creative things – ICE is naturally a playground for that reason. Many of the compounds shipping with XSI 7 started out with a “what if” idea and just tinkering with what was possible. As the Beta cycle progressed, many cool and interesting tools were developed by Beta users that inspired each other to do more.
The following videos cover quite a wide range of subjects - all achievable with ICE. Not one required any coding or scripting. These compounds can be built by anyone with the current release of XSI 7. ICE is a very broad and powerful architecture – the released version has an environment variable that can turn on ICE Kinematics, paving the way for exciting new developments in rigging and animation. Currently this area of the software is unsupported (hence why it’s turned off by default), but the results give you an idea of what’s ahead.
These compound examples will be made available for everyone to download in the near future.
These demos includes work done by many Softimage staff both current and past.
Enjoy the videos! We’d love to hear feedback.
ICE Kinematics – Rigging ConstraintsNote that ICE Kinematics are totally unsupported by Softimage for this release. You can enable this by switching an environment variable on, but you’re on your own!
http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/01_Rigging_Constraints.flv
ICE Kinematics – Rigging IK http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/02_Rigging_IK.flv
ICE Kinematics – Rigging Spines http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/03_Rigging_Spines.flv
ICE Kinematics – Rigging a Dynamic Tail http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/04_Rigging_Dynamic_Tail.flv
Linear Blend and Dual Quaternion SkinningKudos to Thomas Kang who produced the Dual Quaternion skinning compound!
http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/02_Deformation_Dual_Quaternion_Skinning.flvVerlet Integration for Cloth and Soft Body Dynamicshttp://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/01_Deformation_Verlet_Integration.flv
Particles – Continuous Collision Engine http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/01_Particles_Continuous_Collision_Engine.flv
Particles – Growing Plants and Grass http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/02_Particles_Growing_Plants_and_Grass.flv
Particles – Strand Dynamics http://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/03_Particles_Strand_Dynamics.flv Crowds Navigating Waypoint Graphshttp://webrel2.softimage.com/open/video/xsi7/01_Crowds_Navigating_Waypoint_Graphs.flv