Today we raise a glass to one of those rare moments when open sourcing by a major company works. The brand-new Thinkbox MX Plugin Suite for current 3ds Max versions (and V-Ray) is officially available, and it promises to integrate smoothly into the myriad workflows demanded by Max Users.
Features and Compatibility
Available for download from Frogsinspace.at, is a testament to the fact that no matter how callous industry giants treat toolsets, the community prevails, leading to innovation without sacrificing the stability or robust performance. Although the suite is tailored exclusively to enhance 3ds Max pipelines, its open source philosophy ensures that studios—whether big or small—have direct access to tweak, modify, and perfect the tools as their production demands evolve.
Krakatoa MX
Krakatoa MX is a volumetric particle rendering and management toolkit explicitly designed for 3ds Max. It provides an extensive pipeline to acquire, cache, transform, modify, and render vast quantities of particles. Its feature set includes both particle and voxel representations, intricate shading and texturing options using standard 3ds Max materials, and advanced light scattering models (such as Henyey-Greenstein and Marschner). The integration with Particle Flow and seamless data exchange means that natural phenomena—from dust and smoke to ocean foam—are rendered with astonishing speed and detail. This plugin’s finesse is further highlighted by its ability to perform particle culling, deformation, and retiming within production-grade workflows—all while capitalizing on 64-bit memory advantages.
Stoke MX
Stoke MX is a particle simulator plugin for 3ds Max focused on high-density simulations driven by velocity fields. The latest version, Stoke MX 2.8, introduces several new features that extend its capabilities considerably. It provides procedural field generation using mathematical functions, texture maps, and volumetric simulation data from applications like FumeFX. Stoke MX now supports versatile Particle Birth options, allowing emission from mesh surfaces, volumes, vertices, and even existing particle systems. Its advanced features include mixed velocity field inputs (from Force Space Warps, FumeFX, and Thinkbox’s upcoming Ember simulation objects) and robust memory caching mechanisms that enable fast iterative playback. Notably, the new release offers options for channel inheritance and customizable bit depth for particle data storage, thus optimizing disk space without compromising simulation fidelity. With an updated MAXScript interface, Stoke MX empowers production artists to easily integrate and customize simulation workflows on the fly.
Frost MX
Frost MX is the meshing solution from Thinkbox that pairs elegantly with both Krakatoa MX and Stoke MX. Designed as a particle mesher plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max, Frost MX converts dense particle clouds into solid or fluid-like mesh geometry. Its workflow simplicity and intuitive interface help production artists quickly transform simulated particles into tangible models that can interact with scene lighting and camera effects seamlessly. Supporting high-resolution simulations for both liquids and solids, Frost MX leverages multi-threaded processing to offer robust performance across the board.
XMesh MX
XMesh MX rounds out the plugin suite with its dual-role setup: acting as both a Saver and Loader for caching complex mesh geometry. The XMesh Saver captures intricate animated mesh data from 3ds Max with subframe sampling and efficient disk caching, while the Loader effortlessly reintegrates this data back into a scene for further editing or rendering.
