Fabric Engine 2
quad damage
Fabric Engine 2 - http://fabricengine.com/
What is Fabric Engine?
Fabric Engine is a digital content creation platform that enables anyone to build powerful tools and applications for VFX, Games, Virtual Reality and Visualization. Fabric Engine comes with a visual programming system that enables artists and developers of all levels to take advantage of an execution engine that handles complex tasks like multithreading and GPU computing. This core platform provides the foundation for the various components required for building 2D and 3D content creation tools, all of which can be integrated within existing production pipelines.
What is Fabric Engine?
Fabric Engine is a digital content creation platform that enables anyone to build powerful tools and applications for VFX, Games, Virtual Reality and Visualization. Fabric Engine comes with a visual programming system that enables artists and developers of all levels to take advantage of an execution engine that handles complex tasks like multithreading and GPU computing. This core platform provides the foundation for the various components required for building 2D and 3D content creation tools, all of which can be integrated within existing production pipelines.
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Softimage and UE4 have their own visual programming, so it'll interesting to compare the 3. Looks like everything is going to have node based scripting in the future at this rate, with Substance as well.
What wouldn't it be good for? Pretty much anything that is done as a script or a plugin could be done in fabric engine and be deployable across a wide range of software.
The motivation behind Fabric is to liberate studios and their production pipelines from reliance on closed, proprietary DCC applications and the companies that produce those applications.
I guess from this quote that Autodesk haven't found the magic number yet :P
chillzone
Awful name choice, though. I avoided this all day, thinking it was just some third-party cloth simulation tool.
The name can grow on you... I personally disliked it as well but after looking into it more, it made sense. The framework literally "weaves" multiple applications together, as though everything is interlinking strands that together create something bigger.
As for what it is, I think its closer to say its an evolution of XSI's ICE, could be wrong though. I do know they wanted to create something that isnt tied down by the dictates of any one piece of software because stuff like XSI getting shut down can happen. It also opens up the potential for far more software options in the workplace and tools that can transcend getting locked down by any one piece of software.
It's more than an alternative to any one dcc application. It's an alternative to all dcc applications, the workflows and production models they represent and the entrenched business interests that produce those applications. What's interesting and special about this revolutionary new framework is it doesn't force the artists to abandon the old tools and workflows they already know.
It works alongside and INSIDE the tools we already know while at the same time providing a way forward independent of those old tools and the companies that rent them to us.
Fabric is something completely new. It has a real chance at emerging as the unifying standard/platform for computer graphics. Oh and it's free for individuals.
From what I see FE seems to handle data by itself really efficiently. It has nodes that computes everything, even a real time shading node which displays models exactly the same in FE Canvas and in Maya viewport.
Now I haven't tested both extensively but we have a few simulation scenes done in Houdini we tried to bring into Maya for rendering. Things that run 60 fps in Houdini dropped to 0.3 fps in Maya. Totally unworkable.
If FE handles data better than that, it will wipe the floor with Houdini Engine.
Houdini Engine is awesome, it has a lot in common with Fabric, it just doesn't go as far as Fabric does, yet. For instance you are not going to write complete stand alone applications with Houdini Engine. However Side Effects seems determined to be a player in the new market paradigm of content creation platforms.
What is surprising to me is that Side Effects is the only established player from the old school who gets the importance of Fabric and seeks to compete with it.
So that's why it can display geometry lighting fast even if Maya is so terrible at data handling.
http://answers.fabricengine.com/questions/36610/viewport-performance-does-this-rely-on-dcc.html
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Someone pointed me to this thread and suggested I post a hello and offer to answer any questions. So I'll monitor this thread and do my best to give solid responses. Siggraph tends to be a bit of a crazy time and we're also launching Fabric 2 so we're a little busy, so if I take a day or two to respond it's just because of that.
Anyway, thanks for the invitation. I hope to meet some of you at the show next week - you can see our Siggraph schedule on the fabric website. Should be a good week
Cheers,
Paul (CEO at Fabric)
Was wondering if Splice deformation portability is supported in the Unreal implementation?!
The sliding examples look pretty sexy if time invested developing a muscle system in Maya could be ported through yer core.
very interested
In VFX where pipelines include many many different DCCs this kind of framework is priceless, but in games you typically don't have such complicated pipelines, so it's a harder sell.