Kinematic Lab releases PhysX Painter for 3ds Max

Kinematic Lab – aka ace 3ds Max plugin developer Clovis Gay – has released PhyX Painter, an amazing-looking new plugin for populating scenes with objects by simply painting them in and letting them fall under gravity.

Once painted in, the plugin uses PhysX, Nvidia’s newly open-sourced real-time rigid body dynamics system, to create natural-looking distributions for the objects.

Updated: Clovis Gay has been in touch to say that the plugin actually uses 3ds Max’s native MassFX physics system, which is based on Nvidia’s PhysX SDK.

Populate scenes by painting in objects and letting them settle naturally under gravity
PhysX Painter lets users populate scenes by simply painting in objects, using customisable brush tools. Once added, the objects fall naturally, colliding with each other and surrounding surfaces.

Objects can be painted or deleted in groups, with the option to assign custom distribution percentages to the individual models; and once added, simulations can be re-run locally or globally.

The system supports any standard 3ds Max asset, and enables users to paint with low-poly proxy objects then switch them out for high-poly final models once the simulation process is complete.

As well as naturalistic effects, the plugin supports directional or even spherical gravity to create a range of custom object scattering patterns.

As the video above shows, as well as being a quick way to create complex scenes, it looks a hell of a lot of fun.

Pricing and availability
PhysX Painter is available now for 3ds Max 2013 and above. A node-locked licence costs €60 (around $68).

Read a full list of features in PhysX Painter on Kinematic Lab’s website