Cebas Visual Technology has announced the latest update to thinkingParticles. Features of Subscription Drop 10 include the addition of a DirectVolumeRendering SDK that allows any 3rd party renderer to offer the same Volume and Particle Point rendering functionality, as it is offered by Final Render. Talking of finalRender, with the advent of this release, Thinking Particles now includes a full commercial license of Cebas’ flagship render engine at no additional charge.
This release also adds a new OpenVDB PointDataGrids feature to enable thinkingParticles to use GPU and CPU accelerated hardware rendering based on NanoVDB to render a nearly unlimited amount of points. According to the announcement “this new GPU and CPU based point rendering mode is so efficient, it allows to render hundreds of millions of points, all with proper shadow casting and illumination.”
Other features include:
- Updated OpenVDB to version 7.2
- And enhanced and updated OpenVDB Node to support the new continuous volumetric workflow in thinkingParticles and 3ds Max. The addition of a new PointDataGrid type and an option to add the fRVolumeVDB material, enables a fully transparent and continuous volume data workflow within thinkingParticles.
- OpenVDB Voxel now offers a a new collision boundary type called Voxel. This offers a more robust and stable solution for fast-flowing fluid simulations or when fluid is within a moving container.
- The Smoke solver has been overhauled and rewritten from the ground up. It now creates fume and dust whirls in a much more predictable and stable manner. The Smoke solver shows dramatic changes in simulation behavior so it is expected to break older scenes without re-adjustments to the original settings.
- A new CombineVDB node has been added that enables the user to virtually combine and operate between nearly all OpenVDB grid types in existence.
- LoadVDB and OpenVDB Import now offer a re-sample Voxel functionality when loading OpenVDB grids. Additionally, Sequence Mode offers 2 new options; Loop and Ping-Pong.
- The SPH Flow Solver has been updated with enhancements to the quality of the surface and fluid particle positioning. It offers a much smoother surface and better spatial placement of particles within the flow simulation. You can expect to see a better volume conservation and splashier fluids.
- Significant speed improvements to voxeil display in the 3ds Max viewport when ShowVDB is used to display voxel data of massive data sets. VDB data set animations, translations or rotations, are now magnitudes faster than in previous versions of thinkingParticles.
To see a full list of what’s new, visit the what’s new, visit the Cebas website.
Why those examples looks so poor? And low resolution.. and so few particles when they advertise “millions of particles” but it doesn’t looks to have million.. not even one million.
Yeah I’m not quite sure. I was thinking the same thing when it said millions of particles, i thought to myself, this visually could be done in PFlow. Maybe they didn’t have enough time to create good marketing material. I’m not sure.
i think the cup is made of particles
omg… After laughing out loud because it sounded like a great joke, I realized that you are talking serious: because when looking closely at this CUP, it is really porous… 😅
it’s a very bad presentation for a good product actually
The renders looks great! Did you guys used 3dsmax 5 and mental ray?
Yes.. this is Cebas Final Render situation nowadays… If there were no water refraction, I would say that even the new max viewport shader can make better results in realtime.
Hey Mental ray was a great renderer!
Final Render was a very great thing also… Brazil R/S… POVRay and others.
Movie “Titanic”? It was done for a big part with Lightwave. This was the last big thing and advert for NewTek.
@Igor Posavec haha sorry friend, i changed my comment after you read and BEFORE you answer…(the titanic ironic thing ABOUT THE SHIP, NOT THE MOVIE).. 😅 by the way i am a big fan of your works, congrats and have a nice day.
Hey, thanks Marco! 😀 I am amazed you still remember Brazil R/S, those were times, the birth of GlobalIllumination in Max… I still have here the copy, and even a Box of LightScape. And FinalRender CD, SerialNumber “313” – I was the 313th user of FinalRender, back in 199x. Most of my works till 2010 were indeed made with FinalRender!
Yes, i remember very well about Brazil R/S because the commotion caused in that gold times… and because is the name of my country.. 😁🇧🇷
But my long experience was working with finalrender since the first beta versions until v3.5 for 2016, making fast animations/mographs for tv advertsings. Now using Corona Render only.
I remember very well also about some useful plugins that misteriously got extinct… Few examples: Digimation Family (Hypermatter – a creative fast solution for softbody animations, Chameleon – material placement based on gizmos, Clay Studio – modelling based on metabals and metaobjects), Reyes family plugins: Clothreyes, cartoonreyes, jetareyes, dirtyreyes, Surfreyes, NPR1 and specially Metareyes for muscle modelling/animation, something that never was replaced on 3dsmax.. and several particle generators.
By the way thanks God you and your team still updating the great 3DºIO family plugins. Cheers!
Why would I give up Tyflow which is free and buy TP after watching this? I’m sure TP has some awesome features but such a poorly made video. The rule that your showreel should be under 2 minutes and show your best work 1st should also apply here.
Tyflow is currently free. It won’t always be.
But yeah, this video looks like they used videos people created when experimenting and testing. Could have done a little better.
“Tyflow is currently free. It won’t always be.” Well… The developer never said that he will not sell the technology to Autodesk, to embed in max when it is ready for replace PFlow … 😉
The way TP lets you work with groups and organize graphs is far superior to tyFlow. If you want to create complex setups tyFlow becomes hard to work with but for simple setups it is so much faster and easier to use.
I believe TP still runs mainly on a single cpu (except there vdb nodes are multi-threaded and use gpu), which seems it should be there 1 one and only concern at this point. The update is nice, but without multi-threading I will always choose tyFlow over TP.
If you want to create complex setups why not to use Houdini? Even indie version is better than this.
Anything you do in Houdini becomes complicated quickly.
As a designer tool, 3ds max feels much more intuitive to me. The combination of having decent UI, good modelling tools, scene management and advanced custom plugins make 3ds max still stand out.
Better than this in what? TP has limitations over Houdini (obviously) being a plugin, and working with the limitations associated to it. But in what it does… Does it very well. Voxel based collisions in Houdini has not been touched in 15 years. Yes, bullet integration in houdini its great, but a voxel approach its good in so many other cases, and in this regard tP its still the king.
Being able in tP to work with particles independently of the solver, and just turn on/off the solver as you work… its something you can not do easily in Houdini. in tP you want “dumb” particles? fine, now I want to have them as bullet? just turn on the solver. Now you want them as an sph? turn on the solver. Now you want SPH and bullet affecting the same particles? no problem!
What will actually be great is having thinkingParticles workflow inside houdini.
(and yes, Cebas advertising is really really bad, hopefully they have excellent products).
I also agree. The presentation looks 1980. With the same music as previous videos. Thinking Particles is a great plugging. Still to mush money. I’m just disappointed on the price point. But it look like you get Final Render with a copy of Thinking Particles. Tyflow will not be for free forever. OR! Autodesk may just get their hands on it. Hmm. Time will tail.
First of all, with tP you have a great product – but the marketing stuff needs some love. I don’t know if anybody from Cebas will read this…these are the things you should consider working on in the future:
As mentioned above, try to keep your main video presentation under 2 (or maybe 3) minutes. You can expand on certain features with additional videos.
Try using a different background music for videos related to a new subscription drop. There are so many great stores where you can get some nice tracks.
Think about hiring (or working with) a graphic designer that develops a great corporate identity for all your future videos. Doing so, this can elevate your videos to the next level.
Try using quality rendered images/animations. This is much more pleasant to look at than only viewport animations.
Your products are great? – then show it.
I know this is loads of work, but it is worth it.
I totally agree!
TP is one of the greatest 3ds max plugins ever, but the marketing really needs more love.
just check what Houdini guys are doing.
Agreed! TP is a great plugin. Probably the best one out there for Max if you work with these type of things and complex setups. They have always lacked on presentation though, and in today’s marked it’s probably more important than ever.
That being said, looks like there’s a lot of new, good features here.
In some ways I can of course agree to what most people say here about the quality of the videos cebas put out about tP and fR, sometimes it for sure needs a bit of polishing.
Regarding tyFlow – If Tyson will be stupid enough to sell the technology to Autodesk, tyFlow will be dead in 1-2 years because Autodesk will not continue to develope it, just compile it to newer max versions, just like they done with many other things they bought and put inside of max…
Really loved tP when I used max on a daily basis. But at some point they unfortunately stopped improving the overall workflow/concept and just added nodes for all kind of stuff, most of them poorly documented and also unstable. 🙁
Did that change?
Still, I admire cebas for all the work they keep doing, also with fR… – really hope they get their ROI.
It crashes now more than ever… moved to tyflow last year.
Sry double post
cebas really has awefull marketting
Maybe not intended but the lousy movie made everyone talk about it…
its amateur hour at cebas, thye are on the way out
they ran out of funding for marketing and are paying the price
GOODBYE
Oh, how can you start exulting when imagining a traditional 3D software developer going down. 🙁
It is so sad, it is such a small market and community, it makes more sense to have diversity then few monopolists. Would it be better to have only AD, Houdini and Blender, and nothing else? How limited and same everything would look like and work, i wonder.
Actually, it is for me always suspicious when I see in a CGP topic with more then 25 comments. It always reminds me of vultures circling around dying stuff.
Agreed Igor. It is sad.
Yes it is sad to see, I don’t understand why someone would rejoice about things like these, however my beef with TP was always the price tag and the subscription model.
So, you hate cebas, and you hate chaos (derogatory with both, as both show off new tech.).
You’re also derogatory on data you do not have (Chaos victim of its own -and continuing?- success. Cebas out of money. Forreal.), which shows Jack left town.
Who exactly would be doing it right, by your lofty standards?
What a joke. They even couldn’t put up the version right. 6.10 is not 6 dot 10, but 6.1