According to a post on the Stack Facebook group, a complete rewrite of PFlow is in development by Tyson Ibele that aims to “bring Max back to the 21st century”. It’s important to be clear that this is not an Autodesk initiative, it is an independent effort to create “what PFlow could have been if development didn’t stop 10 years ago”. Some of the listed features so far include:
- PFlow operators have been recreated and are all fully multithreaded.
- In addition, many new operators have been added, including a granular solver, cloth, rope, proper path follow, DLA growth, constraints, and more
- A spline operator and fast spline meshing modifier for converting particle trajectories, neighbours, constraints etc. into spline meshes.
- Up-to-date PhysX support.
- Voronoi fracture, brick fracture, boolean fracture, convex decomposition etc, all built-in.
- All of PFlow’s O(n^2) operations have been properly accelerated (mesh collisions, nearest neighbour searches, surface lock/bond, etc)
- No more hidden PFlow operator/event nodes in the scene to manage, each flow is fully self-contained.
- Extra control has been added to all the base operators, and each operator has timing activation controls.
- A C# script operator that executes nearly as fast as native c++ and that supports multithreaded scripts.
- VRay instance rendering support, GPU instancing in the viewport (easily display 100s of millions of polys in the view no problem).
- Super fast auto-caching, similar to the way Houdini caches things on the fly.
- PhoenixFD grid support, PRT import/export.
- Simulation retiming.
- A custom file caching system that is often hundreds/thousands times smaller in file size than alternative systems like xMesh.
According to the post, Tyson also plans to add crowd simulation support and ragdolls and more. There are no details yet of a release date but it is stated that a public beta will be available once the plugin is more feature complete. You can see some tests created with TyFlow on the Tyson’s Instagram page.
There’s also a suggestion to improve the built-in version of PFlow on Autodesk’s Ideas website (with several comments suggesting a collaboration between Autodesk and Tyson Ibele). You can read the proposal and vote here.
We’ll share more news as it becomes available.
I thought Oleg (Orbaz) was working on a re-write of PFlow.. long ago..??? Guess that’s not happening, since we’re a ‘few’ Max releases further..
According to a post elsewhere – Orbaz didn’t really keep up their side of things/seem that interested.
Multithreading, more operators, no hidden dummy mess in scene … sounds like a dream. Could revive one of my favorite tools Autodesk has bought and forgotten. But maybe a little too big a project for a single developer. I keep my fingers crossed!!
But maybe a little too big a project for a single developer.-
not this guy- he is on the ball
if I remenber, particle flow is a max 6 (more or less) implementation…box 3 is (was) powerful for math guys and box 2 is what convinced users to learn tp.
TyFlow could be a new step but needs to be able to dialogue whit other max tools in order to be a 21th sec. useful implementation just to don’t hear that “it can’t do that because of a max limitation”.
Go Tyson go.
What is the Slack facebook group
Should be stack.
I was dreaming of this so many years ago but it feels like when Softimage brought up ICE. And I’m already switching to a pipeline using purely Blender, Houdini and Zbrush. Blender is also coming with an everything nodes including particles nodes : https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=HQi2BqlQtnI
Hey strob. How is your switch to Blender going?
I’ve considered several times but I like Max.
I am doing my first paid project in Blender only. A simple cartoonish project but I love Eevee! Seeing everything in realtime with that levelof quality is so refeshing! I’m also still learning houdini and use Zbrush for a lot of modeling. With those 3 tools I feel like I can survive caus eI don’t have to pay constantly for new plugins for each projects.
This endeavor is not from ADSK, it is from a single guy, how is it similar to ICE?
And don’t count Max out so soon. Blender is an awesome tool, no doubt about it, but Blender can only get you so far if you’re a small or indie artist. As soon as you grow up in scale, or seek for a position at a company, finding Blender open positions is a chore, way way harder than finding a Max position.
I don’t agree with this. I switched to Blender a few years ago from Max, and more than a few studios have shown interest in restructuring pipelines to other software, be that Blender, Houdini, C4D and others.
There’s nothing “wrong” with learning either package, but telling people they won’t get a job because they don’t learn Max isn’t true.
While large established studios have a history with ADSK stuff, a lot of upcoming and growing ones tend to keep an open mind.
Also, the attitude of younger artists has changed significantly to where they’re a lot more critical of expensive software subs and what they’re getting for it.
I agree, we tend to hire talent instead of software proficiency, we’ve found even with Houdini that people that have used pFlow get into the pipeline really fast
I was saying this cause I was a Softimage user at the time and the particle system was so outdated and I was waiting for ICE, and waiting and wainting and then ICE came and I was already elsewhere and you know the rest of the story. To make it short and clear, ICE was too late. And then I dreamed of better tools in max and waited and waited but then I had no choice to start to switch to houdini. I would have need Tyflow 5 years ago! It looks fantastic but sadly it’s too late for me and I’m sure it will cost more than a houdini indie license…
Looks really great – I wonder if TyFlow is likely to support my ye olde Max 2014?
only max 2017 and above I am afraid…
Thanks for the reply Mixa, its definitely a shame but understandable given the way Adesk handles versions and licensing. Good luck anyway…
autodesk has been killing all the softwares. Lack of development
This… is… legit…
Go Tyson |:D/
Tyson’s on fire! OTOH it’s starting to sound a lot like Thinking Particles 😛
Hi Tyson. If you’re reading this. Check out Nvidia’s blast library. It supports chunk hierarchy and a stress solver. It would be a perfect addition to your tyflow plugin. Which looks Great btw.
https://developer.nvidia.com/blast
At least someone here with some constructive ideas. Great idea, hopefully Ty will read this!
Superb news! Absolute shame on Autodesk, one guy puts them to shame!
This improvement is great, thanks to the god!
Guys, just remember to vote for this idea at the Autodesk user feedback. Let’s make it first so Autodesk has to do something about it. 🙂
I wouldnt do that. First AD will buy the source code cutting off Tyson from the project. Then the will make buggy implemenetation in 3dsMax for subscribers only and finally as a rule and their strategy they will stop development and kill it in the early stage. Do not let Autodesk to touch this code!
Yeah, you do have a point there. :/
Tough position we are in. Let’s wait for Tyson to release then.
Aweeeeesome!!!
This is great news. A solid particle system is needed on any 3d Package. Not only for only FX/motiongrphics, is needed as well for advanced distribution/scattering objects. Finally we get vrayInstancing supported!, I will love Tyson add as well procedurals support for Arnold.
Exciting news, cant wait to give it a go. Nice one
So third party picks up Autodesk’s slack again? (Note this is not aimed at the developers working there, rather the people making the decisions regarding max/maya).
most exciting news for me in a while…I need Pflow so much in my work and it also annoys me so much, if this works out and is reasonably priced it will make me super happy…
Would be nice in Cinema 4D.
he has been demonstrating some really cool examples on his instagram profile.
https://www.instagram.com/_tyflow_/
The more I see of it, the more I itch to get my hands on it.
so don’t wait and install Houdini, all that demos are made with it
Ehm,…on his instagram-website it says: Procedural animations made with tyFlow, a particle simulation tool for 3dsmax […]
Where does it say that those animations were made with Houdini?
only 3ds max 2017 and above…
“Automatic tables “do not allow this to be added to max because they do not conform to their product positioning for max.
What does this phrase mean?
I mean I understand what those words mean… but I don´t understand what do you mean with that phrase, and specially the part of “Automatic tables”
Cheers.
AutoDesk – Automatic Tables. 🙂
But my question was with the “conform to their product positioning”, if this is a plugin Tyson could give it for free or sell it, and Autodesk does not have any word on it I think.
Any ETA ? Looks like the answer we’ve been waiting for!
Some new insane examples on Tyson`s instagram.