NextLimit has released version 4.3 of its fluid and dynamics simulation tool ReelFlow, which has been used on such productions like Poseidon, X-Men 3 (The last stand), Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. In addition, updated versions of the Cinema4D plug-ins: are now available for both Windows and Mac
ReelFlow 4.3 New Features
  • The stacking procedure in the rigid body solver is now up to 4 times faster, is more stable, and several problems relating to increase of energy during the process have been solved. There is also more stability with constraints in collision, and a new scripting function to detect collision between keyframed rigid bodies. The spline emitter and daemon emitter manipulation have also been improved.
  • A new tool has been added in the "Edit->Reset Transformations" menu to reset the transformation matrix of a node. It is a shortcut of setting the position, rotation and angles of the node to their initial values.
  • A new tool has been added in the "Edit->Freeze Transformations" menu to reset the transformation matrix of an object, whilst preserving the vertices at their current positions.
  • Improved interaction between fluids and rigid bodies with "dynmotion" set to "No"
  • A new command line option "-reset" has been added. When this option is enabled the scene is reset before the simulation.
  • A new system script from Mark Stasiuk at Fusion CI Studios (www.fusioncis.com) has been incorporated to normalize the age of the particles. This script will re-set the ages of particles from absolute values (seconds) to normalized values (0 at birth to 1 at death). Normalized age is the standard input for particle rendering in 3D packages.
Bug Fixes
  • Bug #967- "add Mesh" function crashes RealFlow when the script is run from the command line.
  • Bug #976- The "get Parameter" function has a memory leak.
  • Bug #964- The downstream feature doesn't work at the same speed for different parts of the surface when the number of threads is > 1.
  • Bug #997- Once a node has been renamed the change is not updated in the selection list tool.
  • Bug #998 Objects coming from OBJ files have their vertices mirrored if the axis setup is different from YXZ(LightWave, Cinema4D).
  • Bug #1002 – If the axis setup is different from "YXZ(Ligthwave, Cinema4D)" the exported SD files have the normals inverted.
  • Bug #1004 – Realwave mesh is not updated properly when the axis setup is changed. This may cause axis flipping when trying to use the command line to simulate a scene with a Realwave object that has an axis setup different from "YXZ(LightWave, Cinema4D)".
For full details of the new features, improvements, and a full bug fix list, please see the release notes here.

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