Deep FX Studio 1.3 ships
Originally posted on 14 January 2019. Scroll down for news of the 1.3 release.
Deep FX World – aka developer Mambo Banda – has released the first beta of Deep FX Studio, a new standalone procedural animation and multiphysics simulation package.
The software, which is based on Banda’s LightWave fluid simulation plugin Deep Rising FX, also has rigid body, fracture and granular fluids capabilities, and exports to other DCC tools in Alembic format.
A standalone node-based multiphysics tool with Alembic and Python support
Deep FX Studio is a node-based procedural animation and simulation package.
The software supports a range of simulation types, including a particle-based SPH fluid solver, granular fluids, and rigid body dynamics based on the open-source Bullet physics libraries; and has a pre-fracturing system.
Geometry can be imported as OBJ or Collada format, and simulations exported to other DCC software as Alembic caches or as volumetrics in VDB format.
The software can also be customised via Python scripting.
Check out Deep FX World’s YouTube channel for demos
The online documentation for Deep FX Studio is still a work in progress, but the basic workflow is outlined in three starter tutorials on Deep FX World’s YouTube channel.
The YouTube channel also features rendered demos of simulations created with the key toolsets, although they’re fairly bare-bones and only show simple test scenes.
Deep FX World says that the feature set isn’t locked, and that it is “open to feature requests” during the beta.
Updated 7 June 2019: Beta 0.3.5 of Deep FX Studio is out. The update adds a toolbar to the UI providing access to common tools; support for Python scripting; and new fracture tools, shown in the video above.
Updated 8 January 2021: Deep FX World has released Deep FX Studio 0.5, a major rewrite of the software, which Banda now describes as a “completely new application”.
As well as overhauling the application’s interface and core workflows, the release adds a number of features, including a new melting and freezing system.
It enables uses to turn parts of a mesh to liquid by moving a ‘heater’ object through it: the workflow is shown at the end of this video.
Other changes include integration with open-source physically based renderer LuxCoreRender, which can now be used as a viewport renderer within Deep FX Studio.
The latest demo video for the software, embedded at the top of this story, gives a feel for its current range of simulation capabilities, which also include soft bodies, cloth and inflatables.
Updated 26 February 2021: Deep FX World has released Deep FX Studio 1.2, adding new options for instancing geometry, used in the demo above to scatter 450,000 plant models throughout a scene.
The big jump in version number is due to the 0.5 release having been retconned to 1.0 to reflect the fact that the software is no longer in beta: something that many users – us included – didn’t realise at the time.
Updated 4 May 2021: Deep FX World has released Deep FX Studio 1.3.
The update adds a new graph editor, making it possible to animate any parameter within the software by manipulating animation curves, in addition to the existing animated properties system.
Pricing and system requirents
Deep FX Studio 1.3 is available for Windows only.
The price has risen since the beta, with the cost of an Indie licence, for artists earning under $100,000/year, going up from $149.99 to $650 $395, and that of a Professional licence rising from $349.99 to $950.