3ds Max tools developer Clovis Gay has posted a neat video demo of Bezier Attractor, an upcoming MAXScript plugin that enables users to attract, rotate or repel vertices of neighbouring objects.

There are a number of potential applications to modelling workflows, but perhaps the most interesting possibility is as a quick, intuitive way to animate ripples, waves and vortices in liquid surfaces without simulation.

You can see the rendered results at the start of the video above, and if you skip forward to around 05:30, you can see Gay creating a nice splash effect by animating a simple spline circle passing through a mesh surface.

According to Gay, performance drops on hi-res meshes, but it still looks a lot of fun to play with. In the comments to the video, he says that he expects to release Bezier Attractor some time this week.

Read more about Bezier Attractor on Clovis Gay’s website

Tags: 3ds max, Bezier Attractor, Clovis Gay, curve, Featured Articles, MAXScript, ocean surface, plugin, release date, ripple, script, splash, spline, vortex, wave, whirlpool