Thursday, February 21st, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

Motion Boutique releases Newton 2.0 for After Effects

Originally posted on 16 January. Scroll down for updates.

Motion Boutique has announced an update to Newton, its ridiculously engaging After Effects physics engine.

From linkages to soft bodies
Newton 2.0 introduces a number of new advanced properties, including attractive and repulsive forces; and the option to control simulations more precisely by using per-object settings.

Most interestingly of all, you can create joints of various types, from rigid links to chains and springs.

This provides the power to simulate some surprisingly complex phenomena: the Newton 2.0 projects reel shows examples ranging from mechanical assemblies to ropes and soft bodies, and even a ragdoll biped.

It isn’t a complete soft-body engine, but it should expand the toolkit of After Effects animators greatly.

New UI and performance enhancements
The UI has also been revamped, and to increase performance in complex simulations, Newton 2.0 adds the option to use convex hulls around objects instead of the meshes themselves: less accurate, but faster to solve.

Updated 21 February: Newton 2.0 is now shipping. Motion Boutique has also released a nice new overview video (above). You can read a complete feature list on the website, although it doesn’t go into a lot of detail.

Newton 2.0 is available now for After Effects CS5 and above on Windows and Mac OS X. It costs $249.99.

Visit the Newton website

Visit Motion Boutique’s Vimeo channel

Download the trial edition of Newton 2.0