Check out 3ds Max multiphysics simulation plugin Aquarius 1.0
Tools developer MagicPictures Software has released Aquarius 1.0, a new multiphysics simulation plugin for 3ds Max.
The new add-on, an upgraded version of MagicPictures Software’s AqMesher, features a new MPM solver for simulating materials like sand, snow and mud, on top of the existing PIC/FLIP solver for liquids and grid-based solver for smoke and fire.
Developed from Japanese VFX facility MagicPictures Studio’s in-house toolset
Aquarius is based on tech developed in-house at VFX facility MagicPictures Studio.
It was released in 2019 as AqMesher and was originally for meshing particle caches and OpenVDB volumes. Version 2.8, released in 2022, added a new liquid solver.
New MPM solver for snow, sand and mud
To that, Aquarius – renamed after another of MagicPictures Studio’s in-house toolsets – adds a Material Point Method (MPM) solver.
It is capable of simulating a range of real-world materials, including mud and granular fluids like sand and snow, with support for collisions with scene objects.
It also simulates elastic and elastoplastic materials, using von Mises and NACC models.
The existing PIC/FLIP solver simulates liquids, and a grid-based solver simulates gaseous fluids like smoke.
Node-based, GPU-accelerated and with unlimited network rendering
Workflow is node-based, with sets of nodes for generating simulation sources, merging or splitting data, applying forces, and assigning kill volumes or kill planes.
Aquarius is GPU-accelerated via CUDA, and licenses include unlimited network simulation. Simulation data can be exported in Alembic format.
The online documentation is fairly minimal, but you can get a feel for what the software is capable of from the demo videos on the product webpage.
Pricing and system requirements
Aquarius 1.0 is compatible with 3ds Max 2018+ running on Windows 10+. GPU acceleration requires a NVIDIA GPU and CUDA Toolkit 11.8.
A perpetual license costs $385, including unlimited network simulation. Anyone who has bought AqMesher 2 in the past year can upgrade for free.
The free edition of the software, Aquarius 1.0 Lite, lacks GPU acceleration or network simulation, and limits simulations to 100 frames.
Read more about Aquarius on MagicPictures Software’s website
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