Monday, August 6th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

SiNi Software ships version 1.11 of its 3ds Max plugins

SiNi Software’s original demo of IgNite, its flagship collection of utility tools for 3ds Max. The firm has just released 1.11 updates to IgNite and its sister 3ds Max plugins SiClone, Disperse and Scatter.


SiNi Software has released updates to most of its suite of 3ds Max plugins, including flagship tool collection IgNite, array system SiClone, object painting tool Disperse, and scattering system Scatter.

The releases – collectively known as SiNi Software 1.11 – add support for the V-Ray Next renderer, improve performance in SiClone, and extend IgNite’s component tools Sculpt, Scribe and Illumi.

Utility tools for 3ds Max artists, particularly those working in visualisation
SiNi Software’s tools have been gaining steadily in popularity, particularly among architectural visualisation artists – its founders all worked in arch viz or game development – since the company launched in 2016.

You can find more information about its first releases, including IgNite and SiClone, in our original story, and more about its newer tools Disperse and Scatter in this story from earlier this year.

New in IgNite: updates to Sculpt, Scribe and Illumi
The biggest changes in the 1.11 update are to IgNite, and its constituent tools Sculpt, Scribe and Illumi.

Sculpt, designed for fixing common errors in CAD models imported into 3ds Max and retopologising the raw geometry, gets new options for finding double vertices and double objects.

Scribe, a spline editing toolset designed for cleaning up imported CAD drawings, now supports splines with modifiers applied.

Illumi, which automates the creation of HDRI lighting setups inside 3ds Max, gets support for multiple HDRIs within a rig, and options to generate previews of HDRIs and to edit them directly inside the software.

The UI has also been updated to scale better to high-resolution displays.

New in the other plugins: support for V-Ray Next, speed boosts in SiClone
The other updates – to SiClone, Disperse and Scatter – are simply to support V-Ray Next (V-Ray 4.x), the latest version of Chaos Group’s industry-standard renderer.

Howver, SiClone does also get a performance update: a “40% speed increase in build times”.

SiNi Software’s remaining plugins – software-agnostic proxy system ProxSi, and Forensic, intended to clean up 3ds Max scenes and imported CAD data for forensic animation – don’t get updates this time round.

Pricing and availability
All of SiNi Software’s plugins are available for 3ds Max 2015-2019, and are compatible with common renderers, including V-Ray. Corona Renderer, Arnold, OctaneRender, Maxwell and Iray.

The plugins are all rental-only: SiClone, Disperse and ProxSi cost £5/month (around $6/month), IgNite costs £12.50/month ($16/month), and access to all of the tools costs £15/month ($19/month).

Scatter is currently a free beta, and Forensic is also free. Both come as part of SiNi Software’s standard installer, which you can download after registering on the firm’s website.


Read a full list of new features in SiNi Software’s 1.11 updates to its 3ds Max plugins

Read more about SiNi Software’s plugins on the firm’s website