Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

thinkingParticles 6.7 ships


cebas Visual Technology has released thinkingParticles 6.7, the latest ‘subscription drop’ for its 3ds Max particle and physics plugin, rolling out a major overhaul of the software’s fluid simulation toolset.

The release improves the speed and stability of fluid simulation and fluid surfacing, and adds new controls for creating surface waves, generating a water level within terrain, and simulating diffusion effects.

Other changes include new 3D Boolean and geometry deformation systems.

Fluid simulation: new tools for creating surface waves, water levels and diffusion effects
The focus of thinkingParticles 6.7 is very much the fluid simulation tools, with further improvements to the SPH fluid solver introduced in thinkingParticles 6.0.

According to cebas, its speed and stability have been further improved, and white water effects are now “fully supported”, while a new multithreaded OpenVDBShape operator should speed up fluid meshing.

In addition, there are new tools for controlling fluid simulations, including a SurfaceForce operator for creating waves and a WaterLevel generator for spawning particles up to a given level within terrain.

Simulations also now support volume diffusion, so any property assigned to a particle can now transfer to its neighbours, making it possible to simulate heat diffusion or the mixing of differently coloured liquids.

Other new functionality: new 3D Boolean and geometry deformation systems
Other new functionality in thinkingParticles 6.7 includes a new ShapeCutter operator for generating 3D Booleans: the video above shows it in use to simulate projectiles punching holes through a volume.

A separate ShapeDeform operator causes particles to ‘attach’ to nearby geometry and influence it, making it possible to create surface pitting and soft fracture effects.

The All-Purpose Fields system introduced in thinkingParticles 6.6 and designed to help art-direct simulations has also been updated, with new functionality designed to control volumetric diffusion effects.

You can find a full list of changes in the online documentation.

Pricing and availability
thinkingParticles 6.7 is available now for 3ds Max 2017 and above. The software is available on a rental-only basis, with a subscription costing €540 per year (around $620). The update is free to subscribers.


Read an overview of the key features in thinkingParticles 6.7 on cebas’s website

Read a full list of features in thinkingParticles 6.7 in the online documentation