Get versions of the free Thinkbox tools that work with 3ds Max 2026

Tools developer Josef ‘spacefrog‘ Wienerroither has released updated versions of four of the Thinkbox products – Krakatoa, Frost, Stoke and XMesh – for current versions of 3ds Max.

The updates make the applications – which were open-sourced by then-owner AWS in 2022 – compatible with 3ds Max 2018 and above, including 3ds Max 2026, the current release.

Rendering and render-management tools used by some of the world’s leading VFX houses
Amazon acquired what became the AWS Thinkbox products from Thinkbox Software in 2017, releasing them all for free five years later.

Of the seven applications, the most widely used were probably render-management system Deadline and render post-processing tool Draft.

However, the remaining apps – tools for managing and rendering large particle sets in 3ds Max and Maya – were also an important part of many VFX and motion graphics studios’ pipelines.

They include particle rendering toolkit Krakatoa, particle and point cloud meshing tools Frost and Sequoia, geometry caching system XMesh, and particle reflow toolkit Stoke.

First updates to the particle tools since they were made available free
Although AWS has carried on releasing updates to Deadline since making it available free – Deadline 10.4, released last October, added support for the then-current versions of 3ds Max, Maya and Houdini – the particle tools have seen less love.

The source code for Frost, Krakatoa, Stoke and XMesh was released on AWS’sGitHub repository in 2022, but has not been updated since.

Now compatible with 3ds Max 2018 to 2026
Wienerroither’s work rectifies that, at least for the 3ds Max versions of the software.

Using the source code, he reconstructed the original build pipeline to run locally, and applied all of the compatibility fixes necessary to compile the plugins for the latest 3ds Max SDKs: something he describes as a “long and tedious process”.

The result is new builds of Krakatoa MX, Stoke MX, Frost MX, XMesh MX Loader and XMesh MX Saver compatible with 3ds Max 2018 and above, including 3ds Max 2026, the current release.

As you would expect of a one-person labor of love, the new builds are “not seriously tested”, so if you’re aiming to use them in production, you may need to troubleshoot them for yourself, although Wienerroither says that he may release updates and fixes in future.

Licensing and system requirements
The updated versions of Krakatoa MX, Stoke MX, Frost MX, XMesh MX Loader and XMesh MX Saver are compatible with 3ds Max 2018-2026. Frost MX is compatible with V-Ray 7.

All are free downloads, but if you appreciate the work, you can make a voluntary donation.

The other AWS Thinkbox products are available free to anyone with an AWS account. You can find more details in this story.

Download editions of the free AWS Thinkbox tools compatible with 3ds Max 2026

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