Deep FX releases Deep Rising FX 2.5
Deep FX – aka developer Mambo Banda – has released Deep Rising FX 2.5, the latest version of its particle-based fluid simulation system for LightWave, adding a new foam and white water system.
The update also improves memory usage in the software’s Euphorik fluid solver.
A native LightWave fluid simulator compatible with other key pipeline tools
First released in 2017, Deep Rising FX is intended as an artist-friendly native fluid simulator for LightWave.
The software uses a 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 2.5: new physically based foam and white water system
The 2.5 update adds a new white water system, described as a “state of the art physically based solution”.
The generator, which produces effects of the type commonly associated with FLIP solvers, is driven by a fluid cache with position and velocity data.
You can see the workflow and controls available in this demo video.
The update also improves efficiency of the software’s Euphorik solver when running on the CPU: Banda says that it is now possible to simulate 5-10x more particles for the same memory usage.
The solver was previously GPU-enabled in Deep Rising 2.0, although the GPU implementation does not yet support all of the features from the CPU version
Pricing and availability
Deep Rising FX 2.5 is available for LightWave 11.6.3 and above, running on Windows 7+. A Mac version will follow “at some point”. A new licence costs $249.99; the update is free to users of version 2.0.
Users of Deep Rising FX also get a free licence of Deep FX Studio, Deep FX’s work-in-progress standalone multiphysics software, until 2020.
Read a full list of features in Deep Rising FX on Deep FX’s website
(Note: no changelog for the 2.5 update)