Stoke MX 2.0 open beta

We have another surprise that even our Beta testers are unaware of!

A few days ago we decided to expand Stoke MX 2.0 even further by merging it with another piece of technology which was previously available as a separate product and was even more expensive than Stoke 1.0… Existing users of both products will get the Stoke MX 2.0 update for free!

See if you can figure it out, it is an easy puzzle to solve! ;o)

I know… I know… Deadline!… finally the ability to manipulate render queue’s with pflow’s velocity channels… xp

If i guess right can I be on the beta? Ember

We have a winner: pieforme
But it is not Krakatoa, and Ember is in Stoke 2 anyway, and then some.

Naturally!
Genome gets the Stoke InputField node, so you can affect geometry with Stoke 2 fields (including Stoke’s own, FumeFX files and simulations, 3dsMax Space Warps, 3rd party external Field 3D and OpenVDB data etc.) quite directly. We also included everything that was planned for Genome 1.1 anyway (specifically the various Loop nodes). So it is an update Genome which also integrates tightly with Stoke’s fields.

For example, you could jiggle vertices as a FumeFX velocity field passes close by, color meshes by various FumeFX channels like Color, Temperature etc, transfer the UV deformations shown in this tutorial
http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/stoke-mx-field-deforming-uvs/
directly without an intermediate Stoke Field Texmap, and a lot more.

Wow this is great! so many options.

Just to clarify – if we buy Stoke in Beta for 495$ we get Stoke MX2 + Genome included? Sounds good…

If you buy Stoke 1.0 now, you get Stoke 2.0 when it is released as part of the first year of support and maintenance which is included in the $495 price. The price includes one workstation license for Stoke 2.0 and Genome (which will be sharing the same license), and two network simulation licenses (which can be run on two machines with Deadline in free evaluation mode to simulate particles and/or field simulations).
After the first year, the renewal of the support and maintenance contract for all Thinkbox products is optional.

Existing Stoke 1.0 customers (we started selling Stoke 1.0 on May 1st 2013, so everyone is still within the first year of support) will get Stoke 2.0 and Genome for free.

Existing Genome 1.0 customers will also get Stoke 2.0 for free regardless of their support contract expiration date (so even if you bought in April 2012 you will still get a free update).

Customers with both Genome 1.0 and Stoke 1.0 licenses will basically double both their Stoke and Genome licenses count as we convert their existing Genome 1.0 to Stoke 2.0. Genome will cease to be a separate product, but we intend to continue using the name and will keep the documentation separate for now.

Genome will be sharing the same DLL and Magma UI scripts with Stoke 2.0, allowing us to reduce code redundancy and maintenance cost. Genome does not require a license for network rendering as scenes can be loaded, but not edited, on machines without a valid license.

One drawback of this is that due to some incompatibilities between the OpenVDB and 3ds Max versions of the TBB threading library, Stoke 2.0 + Genome will not be able to support 3ds Max 2012 and earlier. Stoke 2.0 supports 64 bit 3ds Max 2013, 3ds Max 2014 and will support 3ds Max 2015 when it is released.

Please note that this is preliminary information and subject to change.

The Beta for Stoke 2.0 has been running for a while, so it is more or less feature complete. But the decision to merge Genome with it is very fresh, so the Beta testers have not even seen the new build yet.
We have some more work to do to merge the two code streams into one, and thus we will need to test a bit longer to ensure everything works as expected in both Stoke and Genome. I would guess about a month…

Give facerobot ice and transfer system, Max’s population, making the program