Thinkbox Software has delivered a major update to its particle reflow and field manipulation toolkit. New features include:
- New methods of working with 3D data (including
particles, fields,
meshes and level sets) to produce and synthesize complex simulations
quickly and with a high level of control. - Addition of Genome, a procedural geometry modifier previously available as separate software. Genome can be used to create procedural deformation, selection and editing modifiers, and provides access to Krakatoa
particle streams for mesh-particle interaction. It also integrates with Thinkbox’s Frost and Xmesh. - Flexible I/O ensures Stoke MX 2.0 users
can easily handle data from both third party applications and legacy
particle systems. - Dedicated atmospheric effect enables users to
render fields in various 3DS Max renderers including Default Scanline
and V-Ray.
More on Thinkbox Software.
Great news! Anyone know what the final price is?
Sweet 🙂
pieforme, it is included in sub if you have version 1.0 AFAIK or $595 for a new seat. Pretty robust tool even more so with the addition Genome 🙂
If you want to start with a new seat…I think the price has been increased.
$595 is a great price specially with genome.
@Christian, I pulled it from their pricing page. I would have assumed they had it up-to-date. Maybe Chris or Bobo will chime in to confirm.
@Johnny; I know…it says $595 for Stoke. Yes, one of them will pop up here sooner or later I guess.
Pop! 🙂
Here is the deal:
Stoke 1.0 was $495 and included one workstation license and two network simulation licenses. But we considered the price to be $495 for the workstation license and 2x$0 for the network simulation licenses (in other words, they were free). Additional network simulation licenses could be had at $100 a piece.
Last Siggraph, and ever since, we told everybody who would listen that the Stoke 2.0 price with the whole Ember project functionality rolled in would go up, but users who would buy Stoke 1.0 before the release of Stoke 2.0 would get the free update.
A few months ago, we also decided to throw Genome into the mix because it simply made sense – some of the examples in the Stoke tutorials like the UV deformations really required it, and it would have been impolite to ask you to spend money on yet another product just to pass data from fields to meshes 😉
Suddenly we had Stoke 1.0, Ember Fields toolset and Genome in one package, and it looked like the price would get scary (think Krakatoa MX 😉 ). But we decided to keep the Stoke 2.0 base package price low at $595 – only $100 more than Stoke 1.0, and basically the same as Genome 1.0.
Instead, we took the two free network simulation licenses out of the base package and made them part of a slightly more expensive $725 Standard Bundle for companies running Deadline that want to offset their processing to the farm. This is $70 cheaper than buying one $595 workstation and two $100 simulation licenses. These prices are obviously only for new users who did not jump on the Stoke 1.0 train in the last year or so.
Existing Stoke 1.0 customers get Stoke 2.0 for free, plus Genome thrown in the mix, and they get to keep their two network licenses.
Existing Genome 1.0 customers are considered equal to Stoke 1.0 customers and also get Stoke 2.0 with one workstation and two simulation licenses, for free, EVEN IF their support and maintenance contract has expired already!
Some customers who were so kind to purchase both Genome and Stoke when they became available basically double their licenses of both products – if they had, say, 1 Genome and 2 Stoke 1.0, they end up Stoke 2.0 + Genome that can run on 3 workstations, and with 6 network simulation licenses.
There is one drawback though – for technical reasons outside of our control, we had to remove support for 3ds Max 2012 and earlier. So existing Genome and Stoke customers would have to keep on running v1.0 on those versions of Max, and can only install Stoke 2.0 in 3ds Max 2013, 2014 or 2015 (I highly recommend using Stoke 2.0 with 3dsMax 2015, we use the new Nitrous point drawing features and it FLIES compared to older versions, plus you can control the point size when using Direct3D 9). And since the Genome Modifier in Stoke has the same ClassID as the old one, you should never try to run Genome 1.0 and Stoke 2.0 in 3ds Max 2013 at the same time to avoid Duplicate Plugin errors on Max startup!
Scenes saved with Genome 1.0 will load in Max running Stoke 2.0 without any problems.
We hope to have a Stoke 2.0 Webinar soon to show you some of the new stuff you can do. In the mean time, you can take a look at some of the heavily illustrated tutorials:
http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/stoke-mx-field-tutorials/
Thanks Bobo for this in-depth explanation.