It’s been 2 years since we launched our first tool, VectorayGen, and now we’re tackling a much bigger issue that has plagued your workflow since the dawn of VFX… Fluid Simulations!
We’re excited to showcase our latest progress on EmberGen - A standalone real-time fluid simulation tool built specifically for real-time VFX Artists. Yes indeed, it’s the first fluid simulation tool built specifically for people like us! Please note everything is still a work in progress.
Real-time WYSIWYG viewport, complete with volumetric lighting & shadows
Ability to color fluids via custom gradients.
Intuitive node graph editor and parameter timeline.
Instant game ready flipbook generation.
All the data you need: Motion vectors, normal maps, temperature maps, and more.
Vector field velocity injection to make fluids bend to your will. (Yay! VectorayGen is still relevant <3)
In-software flipbook preview system.
A plethora of presets to learn from.
Ability to run on a GTX 1050 and above.
Voxel resolutions up to 512x512x512 - Runs fast on a GTX 2080 Ti, chugs (5-6fps) on a GTX 1080.
Target resolution of 256x256x256.
Will you eventually support volumetrics in game engines like UE4/Unity, instead of just flipbooks?
Yes, in a baked form atleast. We’re already researching 3D/4D spritesheets and other methods of getting volumes into game engines. We do plan on adding open VDB support in the future if you’d like to export volumes to other 3D software packages as well.
If I have a potato PC, will it be able to run this software?
Most likely not, we recommend that you have at the bare minimum, a GTX 1050 or above. Both AMD and Nvidia cards will work with EmberGen.
Is the software limited to just fire, smoke, and explosions?
Nope! You will be able to generate various tiling textures, 3D noise, procedural volumetrics, magic, stylized effects, etc.
Is the tool a plugin for some other software?
No, it’s completely standalone and uses a proprietary simulation and rendering platform that we built from scratch.
Today we added a more advanced lighting system to the software. It allows for rendering simulations that are close to photorealism in some instances, at less than 1ms in added render costs!
So… no lie, HUGE smile on my face seeing this. When you get closer to release candidate, I would love to see something made with this in an engine when you announce. Thank you and your collection of mad scientists for your efforts. This is very… encouraging.
Yep! Now whether or not it’ll be in our very first release, i’m not sure yet. Our goal is to support any data export you could possibly need for flipbooks. Motion vectors, normal maps, temperature/density, color, etc, and the ability to pack these things into the RGBA channels of a texture.
Heh, being able to simulate your RGB rig was one of my first questions as well. They’ve served me well in the past (using PhoenixFD and V-Ray) and would do wonders if EmberGen could automate the process of combining the opposing sides.
We’re getting really close to perfecting our smoke renders and we also added an optional ground plane to add more depth to the viewport. It’ll eventually support PBR textures (grass, dirt, concrete etc).
We’ve had a nice launch to everyone who signed up thus far. Please let me know if you guys have any questions! We want as much feedback as we can get from this alpha version and our beta will be coming up within a month or so depending on how quickly we can implement our new node graph.
Hey Janga, where do we submit feedback. the main thing I was trying to do was make and save a preset and reopen it again, i can’t find where it’s saved. it’s not in the Embergen/presets folder.
In terms of presets, if you haven’t purchased a license you can’t save them yet or export textures. We are going to push an update to the software to let you save your own presets, but still not export files. Once we’re in beta, you’ll be able to test flipbook exports.
It’s looking like our beta will be out in a couple of months, maybe sooner, maybe later. We’re working on our node graph right now which is a massive undertaking. Our beta will feature most requests that we’ve gotten and it should be really close to production ready within a few patches of it we think.
In the meantime, here are a few videos of some R&D we’ve been doing:
Then here’s a video showing my most recent project with EmberGen: Fire Arrows
