The last few days, I've been using 3dsmax, primarily because my current workplace uses it, and that I also need to use the most awesome FumeFX for the project.
FumeFX, is the most excellent Smoke/Fire fluid sim plugin for 3DS max, from the same people that brought us After Burn. I would say, from my newb experience, it is hands down the easiest and fastest way to get awesome looking fire and smoke out of the box.
In barely half a day of working with it, I already have a nice fireball working as expected, and the simulation is very, very fast. Not only is it fast, but it is super multithreaded, at least the help says it can scale up 16 cpus! The rendering is also absolutely, impossibly fast. My PAL res renders were running nearly 6 seconds a frame!
FumeFX and Afterburn are probably one of the 3 reasons why it's nice to have a copy of max lying around (the third reason, is the awesome Editable Polygons. THAT contains a very nice suite of tools for modeling stuff fast. NB: While so awesome, I wouldn't hesitate to go over to Houdini's SOPs anytime - proceduralism kicks serious ass, and I know it.)
Now the problem with re-learning software is that the keys get all messed up. Heck, I only figured out how to switch between Shaded and Wireframe mode barely 5 hours ago. What's worse, when I load up Houdini (Apprentice HD FTW!), I'm already exhibiting 3ds-maxism - I'm trying to rotate the viewport using Alt-MMB lol! While I only have 1 or 2 waking hours at home, I am going to dedicate them to figuring out more Houdini. Tonight's schedule is Character Rigging. Well not Character Rigging as per using the H9 Auto Rig, but just using good ol' bones and capture regions.
Enough blogging, time to give SOPs a good run!
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