I used C4D for well over a decade and ended up learning Houdini because C4D’s high level tools run out of flexibility really quickly. For simple Mograph setups there’s nothing faster than C4D but when you want real tight control over an effect like smoke blowing over geometry and the smoke causes the geometry to subdivide, and extrude into L-Systems each individually different based on attributes that are stored on the object’s vertices then you need Houdini or Everything Nodes in the near future.
Same with X-Particles, it’s great for making impressive looking bulk particle animations but it still lacks a lot of control that you can only get through scripting or the visual programming of a node graph.
This was the case with MCG system in Max. It was too low level and never caught on with the majority of users, who are artists, with artist brains, not programmer brains. Developers spent a lot of resources on it and it flopped, and now it will be retired by Bifrost.
The new Bifrost system currently being developed is taking a more high level approach so the system is more user friendly, for artists. This isn’t to say that it can’t be accessed at a lower level. Similar to OSl. You have your high level nodes for artists, and the raw code is right there to edit for those who want to delve to the lowest level.
Speaking of Bifrost/MCG, in Max users can output modifiers and add them directly to the modifier list. My understanding of this in Blender is that modifiers cannot be added to the list by users. Will Everything Nodes allow this?
When I first came from Max, adding simple modifiers like bend and lattice just seemed ludicrous. Thankfully, there are a lot of addons to ease the pain. Modifier List addon is pure gold. Also, for arrays I always use HardOps. Hops is easily one of the best workflow enhancement toolsets in Blender. Makes life so much easier, for so many common tasks.
Exactly. We already have modifiers, why would we need tools like HardOps which, from a pure, theoretical stand-point, the only thing it does is to streamline the workflow, reduce the amount of work for the end-user, makes things faster… (of course, we know that’s simply reductive).
We could then have MCG (old Max user here as well), but we know how it ended. Of course, there’s hope for Blender’s node system to take a more successful route. But that’s not the point. The point is to have the right tool, for the right job.
Because this is generally par for the course with all DCCs. Using a DCC vanilla is a rarity. Everyone customises/streamlines their workflow.
As for why we need tools like Hardops. They are made with a very heavy input from working artists(or actually by a single artist) and are generally designed very well. Take Graphite toolset in Max, for instance, they took a VERY efficient plugin made by one artist - Polyboost - and turned it into a lumbering monstrosity.
I’ve reviewed the thread… it only went sideways here at the very end.
@anon71893420 and @Andrew_Ray, if you want to have you’re little tit-for-tat about how to correctly use a forum, you can do that via DM. It has no place in this thread. In a forum, anyone can respond to anyone. And we have the ability to ignore those posts, either with our own willpower or with the forum’s built-in Ignore and Mute features.
Attacks on the intelligence or mental state of other forum members are unacceptable. Period. Both of you should consider this post an official warning.
But that’s not even close to what Everything Nodes intends to be. In the early previews of the particle system the nodes were very limited and low level such that you would have to build an effector from first principles. But this is not what’s going to be the final state, the design documentation clearly shows that high level nodes and group nodes are also going to be delivered to so users of all levels are catered for.
It’s important that Everything Nodes caters for every user level particularly as there are some extremely clever and generous users who will, given the low level tools, create vast quantities of Group Node Assets like many do with Shader Group Nodes. Once the Asset manager arrives it’ll open season on sharing all manor of assets.
The scope of Everything Nodes shouldn’t be limited by those who refuse or can’t learn how to use a Node Editor, the community will very quickly produce High Level Black Box style nodes for example fireworks, explosions, tornadoes for those more basic users. Thankfully Jacques Lucke has really thought about the system he’s making.
Since X-Particles was mentioned, my testing of early builds of the new particles system show it to handle vastly higher particles counts at a much higher framerate than X-Particles on my workstation and that was really early code. In a very short period of time Blender’s new particle system will be turning heads especially when the community gets to work making Assets that will replicate most if not all of X-Particles in one way or another.
In order to build a particle system a lot of foundations have to be written which will be common between it and the rest of the Everything Nodes system, so the flexibility and performance of the particle system gives me great confidence in the rest of the system already. I did hear Jacques Lucke say at the Blender conference that Modifiers may not continue or words to that effect, if each modifier was just a Node Group in the Node Editor there’s no difference to creating a stack of modifiers or just connecting a series of ‘modifier’ nodes together. There’s no difference to the end user.
This says to me, sharing of assets, not leaving any user behind and beginning to think about changes to the Node Editor to make readability better. Coming from C4D and Xpresso where every single node looks identical makes reading a complex Node Tree near impossible the latter bullet point is very encouraging.
I agree, my point was that MCG was too low level for peoples’ tastes, wasn’t artist friendly, and pretty much flopped. These systems should be just as accessible to all kinds of artists, from high level ‘quality of life’ workflow improvements for dabblers, to low level noodle chaos graphs that go on forever…
The system should ultimately be as low level accessible as is possible. This will benefit all users, because artists not comfortable working with nodes will still gain the benefits of the amazing slew of tools we are inevitably going to see created.
Node editor needs more flexible and fast way of adding text comments so the nodes can be somewhat explained in context. Nodes are literally programming and in programming a lack of comments in the code explaining the code is HELL.
