Wednesday, June 27th, 2012 Posted by Jim Thacker

Videos: see cebas’s thinkingParticles 5 in action

Cebas has released three new teaser videos for thinkingParticles 5, the forthcoming update to its 3ds Max particle simulation system.

As you might expect, performance has been improved. The video above shows a thinkingParticles 4 simulation that updates at just 7fps in 3ds Max’s Nitrous viewport, but 262fps when run in thinkingParticles 5.

Cebas claims that beta testers have reported viewport speed boosts of 50-100 times over thinkingParticles 4.

The release also features a new implementation of Bullet physics. The video above is aimed at demonstrating how stable the simulations are, so it doesn’t provide the eye candy of many physics demos.

Perhaps more interestingly, thinkingParticles 5 also includes a complete physics-based car simulator, which you can see in action above. “We can deliver functionality that no other tool can in 3ds Max,” runs the voice over.

There isn’t any news of the rope simulator or data interchange with Krakatoa or Maxwell Render announced at Siggraph last year – or indeed, of the actual release date, but we assume that all three must be imminent.

Visit cebas’s thinkingParticles YouTube channel