Deep FX releases Deep Rising FX 2.0
Deep FX has released Deep Rising FX 2.0, the latest version of its particle-based fluid simulation system for LightWave, adding a new granular solver, plus support for GPU acceleration.
The price of the software has also been reduced by $75, to $249.99.
A native LightWave fluid simulator compatible with other key pipeline tools
First released last year, Deep Rising FX is intended as an artist-friendly native fluid simulator for LightWave.
The software uses a “state of the art” Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) solver capable of reproducing real-world phenomena including viscosity, surface tension and vorticity effects.
The plugin supports OpenVDB meshing, and also supports RealFlow’s .bin and Houdini’s .bgeo file formats, making it possible to exchange particle caches with other software.
New in version 2.0: new granular and viscous jet solvers, GPU acceleration via OpenCL
Version 2.0 of the software introduces two new solvers: one for granular materials like sand, and a dedicated viscous jet solver “for materials like honey and ice cream”.
You can see both in action in the video above: the jet solver seems to perform better with fluids of moderate viscosity than with ice cream, but it looks capable of generating plausible glop.
Both the new Arena granular solver and the default Euphorik fluid solver are also now GPU-accelerated.
According to Deep FX, the feature set of the GPU fluid solver currently lags behind that of the CPU version, but both GPU versions are based on OpenCL, so they should work with any manufacturer’s hardware.
The Euphorik solver also gets a number of optimisations designed to generate more stable, production-ready simulations, including a new pressure relaxation option; and improved surface tension.
The update also introduces five new filters to control Euphorik simulations, including drag and vortex effects.
Support for foam and bubbles to follow later in the 2.x release cycle
According to the Deep Rising FX thread on NewTek’s forum, support for diffuse particles – for effects like foam and bubbles, similar to those generated by FLIP fluid solvers – should follow later in the 2.x cycle.
Other popular feature requests for future releases include a more robust implemention of Bullet physics, and support for motion blur on mesh sequences generated by the software.
Pricing and availability
Deep Rising FX 2.0 is available for LightWave 11.6.3 and above, running on Windows 7+. A Mac version will follow “at some point”. The price of a new licence has been cut by $75 since the original release, to $249.99.
Read a full list of features in Deep Rising FX 2.0 on Deep FX’s website