Thinkbox announces Stoke MX 2.0 and Krakatoa MX 2.2

New features in Stoke MX 2.0, Thinkbox's particle reflow and field manipulation toolkit include:

• Stoke MX 2.0 extends upon the existing v1.0 feature set by including the complete Ember field editing toolset in one integrated package.
• Ember includes tools for creating, saving, loading, converting and manipulating volumetric data from various sources.
• Ember supports various popular file formats including FumeFX's native FXD files, Sony Imageworks open Field3D file format and DreamWorks' OpenVDB file format, the latter being used as the native volumetric data storage format of Stoke 2.0 with Ember technology.
• Ember continues the Asynchronous simulation tradition of Stoke MX 1.0, allowing large simulations to be processed on multiple background threads without blocking the user from doing other operations inside of 3DS Max.
• Ember adds support for volumetric and particle data flow through the Max modifier stack, allowing the conversion of mesh volumes to fields, fields to particles and so on using simple and familiar 3DS Max workflows.
• Ember provides both procedural, history-independent Velocity Field creation, and advanced history-dependent field simulation, based on the familiar Magma channel editing technology found in Krakatoa MX and Genome MX.
• Ember integrates with various sub-systems of Max, including MassFX rigid body simulations and mCloth through an Ember-specific Force Space Warp, with Particle Flow through a dedicated Ember Follow operator, with 3DS Max Materials via a Ember Texture map, and so on.

Stoke MX 2.0  is expected to enter beta testing later this year.

New features in Krakatoa MX 2.2, Thinkbox's particle point renderer and management toolkit include:

• Added Particle Repopulation to the PRT Cloner Modifier, exposing the features already available in Krakatoa MY and SR.
• PRT 1.1 file format I/O with Global and Per-Channel Metadata support. The same format is now supported by Krakatoa MY 2.2.0 and Krakatoa SR 2.2.0, allowing seamless transition between the coordinate systems and scales of 3DS Max, Maya and other implementations.
• Implemented Units conversion via Global Metadata - "LengthUnitInMeters" defines the file scale vs. 1 Generic Unit = 1 Meter scale.
• Implemented Coordinate System conversion via Global "CoordSys" Metadata value and per-channel "Interpretation" Metadata values specifying the channel's semantic meaning (Point, Vector, Orientation, Rotation etc.)
• Installer now supports 3DS Max 2014 64 bit.

More information on Thinkbox Software's website: Stoke MX 2.0, Krakatoa MX 2.2.