Tuesday, January 9th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

Download Cinema 4D physics framework Effex 2.8 for free


Originally posted on 9 January 2018. Scroll down for updates.

Navié – aka developer Samir Kharchi – has released Effex, its physics simulation framework for Cinema 4D, for free. Effex 2.8, the final version of the software, is now available on GitHub.

A pioneering fluids and effects framework for Cinema 4D
On its release at the start of the decade, Effex became the first serious commercial fluid simulation system for Cinema 4D, capable of tackling both gaseous and liquid simulations.

Over time, the feature set steadily evolved, including support for particles, volumetrics and rigid bodies. Each toolset works independently, and can be controlled via Cinema 4D’s Xpresso nodes, or scripting.

Although in recent years Effex faced competition from newer rivals, including Insydium’s X-Particles and Next Limit’s RealFlow | Cinema 4D, it remained a powerful tool with a number of innovative features.

Over €500 of simulation tools for free
From what we can see, the version available on GitHub is the full edition of the software, which used to sell for just under €600 (around $700), and includes the inline documentation.

Navié’s website went offline last year, and the new GitHub repository doesn’t discuss why the software is now free, but this thread on C4D Cafe suggests that Kharchi may have had health problems last year.

As a result, we’d expect that the software is being released ‘as is’, with no future development or support planned, but we’ll update if we find out more.

System requirements and availability
Effex 2.8 is available for free via the link below. It is compatible with Cinema 4D R16+ on Windows: so far, the GitHub repository doesn’t include the Mac version.

Updated 20 April 2018: At the time of posting, the source code for Effex 2.8 has been removed from GitHub, although the SDK for the software is still available in Samir Kharchi’s repository.


Visit Samir Kharchi’s GitHub repository

Watch feature demos of Effex on Navié’s old Vimeo channel