Sneak peek: GPU-accelerated smoke and fire in NeXus
Insydium has previewed nxExplosiaFX, a new GPU-accelerated smoke and fire simulation tool in NeXus, its particle and effects simulation add-on for Cinema 4D.
The feature, which is due in beta “soon”, is designed for both small- and large-scale smoke and fire effects, and comes with a new GPU viewport renderer for previewing simulations.
A GPU-accelerated particle effects tool for motion graphics and VFX work
First released in 2022, NeXus is a GPU-accelerated counterpart to X-Particles, the firm’s CPU-based particle-based multiphysics plugin for Cinema 4D.
It currently includes a liquid and granular fluid simulation toolset, plus a range of helper tools, and being Vulkan-based, is compatible with AMD, Apple, Intel and NVIDIA GPUs.
NeXus requires X-Particles, but is available separately to it.
nxExplosiaFX: a new GPU-accelerated smoke and fire simulation toolset
nxExplosiaFX provides a GPU-accelerated counterpart to another key feature from X-Particles: ExplosiaFX, its smoke and fire simulation toolset.
Although most of the examples shown in the demo are relatively small, according to Insydium, it is intended for simulations of a range of scales, from “candles [to] towering explosions”.
As with ExplosiaFX, all of the settings and controls are housed within a single scene object, which has been designed “from the ground up” to be easy to navigate.
Fire and smoke can be emitted from a range of sources – objects, splines, vertex maps, shaders, and particles – and affected by forces including turbulence, vorticity and wind.
Users can color the underlying particles using data channels including temperature and fuel.
nxExplosiaFX also comes with a new GPU viewport renderer for volumetric previews of simulations: you can see it around 49:00 in the video at the top of the story.
Price, system requirements and release date
nxExplosiaFX will be available “soon”. Insydium hasn’t given a date for the beta release.
NeXus itself is available as part of Insydium’s Fused product bundles, and is compatible with Cinema 4D 19+, on Windows 7+ or Windows 7 or macOS 10.14.6+.
Fused Complete bundles include a perpetual license of NeXus and now cost £890 (around $1,200). Fused subscriptions cost £390/year (around $525/year).
You can also create custom product bundles.
Read more about NeXus on the product website
(No information about nxExplosiaFX at the time of writing)
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