So all you people who are dyeing to jump over, I personally say go for it, try it for yourself and see for yourself and if you stuck with it as a freelancer, or even an artist for that matter then my hats off to you. That animation toolset, again nothing special, although IвЂ™d really like to see a modern interface like that of Houdini with Max.ДЄnd those exact selection tools have been in Max for a while now, funny thing is most people arenвЂ™t even aware of their existence or use them for that mater. Yes the sand solver looks nice, but If I really needed one I could always use a more focused and specialized tool like Realflow and not have to dive into something as complicated as Houdini, those softbody demoes and that wire demo, ThinkingParticles can do them and much more, the Crowd tool honestly wasnвЂ™t THAT impressive to me, at least most of it wasnвЂ™t, actually the most impressive part of the whole demo for me was the crowds interaction with the fluids, which even that isnвЂ™t that unique, if autodesk implements Bifrost in Max, Max can do all that and then some, also bear in mind that Populate is still under development, but yes it could pick up the paced here and there. It looks nice and impressive true, and it is a very capable tool true, IвЂ™ve worked with it for a couple of months, but hereвЂ™s the thing, it wasnвЂ™t the tool that I as a freelancer could get comfortable with, nor was it the fastest in a lot of cases, both literally and workflow wise. And this is my point: doesntвЂ™ matter if itвЂ™s possible вЂ“ it only matters how far you can take it. These Houdini agents get deformed and shaded at rendertime. Of course you can try this in TP, but is there any film quality shot to prove its worth it? ItвЂ™s same thing as with instances: they donвЂ™t exist in max and TP unless you use finalrender which is absurd. What do you get from this fastвЂ™nвЂ™easy TP approach.?ДЄccording to crowd. IвЂ™m writing all this because every here and there I read these stereotypic kind of comments claiming that Houdini is so slow. I donвЂ™t event want to mention the sh**ty caching system which prevents you from using high substep valuesвЂ¦unless you have unlimited time and storageвЂ¦.

Anything else is a never ending struggle to get a stable result. Yes, thereвЂ™s everything you need solver-wise, but when it comes to high resolution, heavy simulations, all you can get is very good RBD. Not even something close to high quality production simulation. Dozens of beta-testers and lots of time and there is nothing. IвЂ™ve read about Cebas doing fluid development way before TP5 was out. Could you please give just one example of a decent soft-body/cloth simulation done in TP? TheyвЂ™ve been developing TP6 for something like 2 years.

Bifrost vs realflow