cebas releases finalFluid 1.0 for 3ds Max
cebas Visual Technology has released finalFluid, its new gaseous fluid simulator for 3ds Max.
The GPU-accelerated software enables users to simulate effects like fire, smoke and dust inside 3ds Max in near-real time, then render the results in any renderer that supports the OpenVDB format.
Simulate fire and smoke directly inside 3ds Max in near-real time
Originally released in public beta earlier this year, finalFluid enables users to simulate gaseous fluids like fire, smoke or dust clouds directly inside 3ds Max in near-real time.
The solver uses a sparse voxel grid method, improving performance by allocating simulation blocks dynamically so that system memory is only used to calculate active regions of the grid.
Users can guide the simulations with many of 3ds Max’s standard Space Warps, including Wind, Gravity and PBomb, or via an OpenVDB velocity field assigned using finalFluid’s own fF-VDBForce Space Warp.
Simulations can also be driven by native 3ds Max particle systems or third-party simulation tools like tyFlow or cebas’s own thinkingParticles.
The results can be rendered in cebas’s finalRender or any third-party renderer that supports the OpenVDB format, including Arnold and V-Ray.
New in finalFluid 1.0: control fluid emission and collision with texture maps
finalFluid 1.0, the first commercial release, adds a number of features to the original beta, including the option to use any standard 3ds Max texture map to control fluid emission or collision.
It is also now possible to create forces from meshes, and to set a custom simulation start time.
For pipeline integration, users can export colour and velocity grids from finalFluid, and can export particle emitters in OpenVDB format. OpenVDB export is also now multi-threaded.
In addition, the commercial release supports an unlimited number of fuel emitters and force fields.
Pricing and system requirements
finalFluid 1.0 is compatibile with 3ds Max 2021+ running on Windows 10+. You will need a Nvidia GPU to use it: the minimum spec is a DX12-compatible GeForce GTX card with 4GB VRAM.
The software is available rental-only. Subscriptions have a recommended price of $395/year.
Read more about finalFluid on cebas’s website
Read an overview of finalFluid’s features and workflow in the online documentation