Frost 2.5.1¶
August 2022
What’s New¶
- Removed licensing
- Added support for 3ds Max 2023
- Removed support for 3ds Max 2019
Frost 2.4.0¶
March 2022
What’s New¶
- Added support for 3ds Max 2021, 2022
- Added support for V-Ray 5 in 3ds Max 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022
- Removed support for 3ds Max 2017, 2018
Frost 2.2.3¶
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
What’s New¶
- Added support for geometry instancing for V-Ray Next in 3ds Max 2017, 2018, and 2019
Frost 2.2.2¶
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
What’s New¶
- Dropped support for 3ds Max 2013, 2014, and 2015
- Added support for 3ds Max 2019
- Updated the End User License Agreement
- Updated the license version. Please contact our sales department for a new license
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed an issue with motion blur offset when using V-Ray instancing
Frost 2.1.0¶
Friday, September 1, 2017
What’s New¶
- New license version. Please contact our sales department for a new Frost 2.1 license file.
- Added support for 3ds Max 2018.
- Removed support for 3ds Max 2012.
- Updated End User License Agreement.
Bug Fixes¶
- Fix incorrect Bitmap map Blur when using V-Ray Instancing.
- Fix Frost erroneously updating when using a Editable Mesh → Krakatoa PRT Surface particle source with “Update When Particles Change” and “Update When Frost Changes” disabled (see report).
Frost 2.0.14¶
Thursday, January 26, 2017
What’s New¶
- Breaking Change: Removed support for loading LAZ files.
- Disabled error messages due to missing Alpha and Illumination channels when using V-Ray Instancing.
- Such error messages were displayed excessively in some cases, leading to slow or hanging renders.
- Added an About dialog. This can be accessed by pressing the “About Frost” button in Frost’s Help rollout.
Frost 2.0.10¶
Monday, September 19, 2016
What’s New¶
- New license version. Please contact our sales department for a new Frost 2.0 license file.
- Added support for 3ds Max 2017.
- Removed support for 3ds Max 2010, 2011, and all 32-bit versions of 3ds Max.
- Improved performance of Union of Spheres, Metaballs, Zhu/Bridson, and Anisotropic meshing.
- Added support for V-Ray geometry instancing.
- To enable this, use the new “Use V-Ray Instancing” checkbox in the “Particle Geometry” rollout.
- Requires V-Ray 3.1 or later.
- Added Region of Interest controls.
- Lets you limit meshing to a bounding box.
- These controls can be found in the new “Region of Interest” rollout.
- Added support for loading additional particle file formats: E57, LAZ, PLY, PTG, and Thinkbox SPRT.
User Interface Changes¶
- Double-clicking an item in the “Particle Objects” or “Custom Geometry” list will now select the corresponding object in the scene.
- Added right-click support to list controls in the Frost UI.
- Selecting, reordering and removing source objects can now be performed directly by right-clicking an item instead of highlighting it and then using the [>>] menu button.
- Added Frost menu to main menu bar.
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed error when using a float16 Radius channel with Anisotropic meshing.
- Fixed SubAnim name of “geometryOrientationDivergenceAxisY” (was “X” instead of “Y”).
Frost 1.4.3¶
Thursday, April 30, 2015 at 11:49AM
What’s New¶
- Added support for 3ds Max 2016.
Installer Changes¶
- Silent installer now adds Frost to all detected versions of 3ds Max. Previously, it added Frost only to the newest version of 3ds Max.
- Fixed error when running silent installer on a system that does not have 3ds Max installed (see report 13115).
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed the Custom Geometry Seed control (see report 12988).
- Since Frost 1.4.0, the Animation Timing Seed was used instead of the Custom Geometry Seed, and the Custom Geometry Seed was ignored.
- Fixed an error that caused meshing to end prematurely in some cases, producing an empty mesh with no error message.
Frost 1.4.2¶
Monday, November 17, 2014 at 3:22PM
What’s New¶
- Enabled support for Thinking Particles 6.x.
Frost 1.4.1¶
Wednesday, July 2, 2014 at 12:18PM
What’s New¶
- Added support for Thinking Particles 6.0
- Added support for Thinking Particles 5 in 3ds Max 2015.
Frost 1.4.0¶
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at 11:37AM
What’s New¶
- New license version. Please contact our sales department for a new Frost 1.4 license file.
- Added support for 3ds Max 2015.
- Removed support for 3ds Max 2009 and earlier.
- Added support for reading RealFlow RPC particle files.
- Added support for reading LAS particle files.
- Added support for reading PRT 1.1 CoordSys metadata.
- This will affect PRT files written by Krakatoa MY and Krakatoa C4D, as they will now be transformed from Y-up to Z-up.
- Changed some error messages to include the name of the affected Frost node.
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed crash when adding PRT Loader as a particle source in 3ds Max 2011.
- Fixed error in Geometry meshing with Custom Geometry for particles with Radius = 0.
- Fixed error reading CSV, XYZ, PTS, and PTX files when using German locale.
- Fixed getting Velocity from a Krakatoa PRT Loader with its Playback Graph enabled.
- Added horizontal scrollbar to log window.
- Fixed invalid undo messages.
Frost 1.3.5¶
Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 12:19PM
What’s New¶
- New Age and LifeSpan channel handling. This affects Frost’s “Particle Size” ? “Sync by” control.
- In this new version, Age and LifeSpan channels are handled using float seconds for all particle sources. Previously, only RealFlow .BIN files used float seconds, and all other particle sources, including Thinkbox .PRT files, used integer ticks.
- Any source that uses an integer Age or LifeSpan channel will be converted from integer ticks to float seconds. A float Age or LifeSpan channel is assumed to be in seconds already and will not be converted.
- These changes are for compatibility with .PRT files written by new versions of Krakatoa (2.1.8+) and with other future plugins (Stoke MX).
- Added support for upcoming Thinkbox particle source (Stoke MX).
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed Sphere geometry texture coordinates. Previously, sphere texture coordinates were all zero. Now they vary over the sphere’s surface.
- Fixed incorrect mesh transform when Frost is references using an XRef Scene.
Frost 1.3.4¶
Friday, November 2, 2012 at 10:38AM
What’s New¶
- Added support for Thinking Particles 5.1.
Frost 1.3.3¶
Monday, September 17, 2012 at 6:48PM
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed support for Thinking Particles 5 in 3ds Max 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Frost 1.3.2¶
Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 11:40AM
Bug Fixes¶
- Fix playback crash and rendering errors when using a particle source with an animated noise modifier.
Frost 1.3.1¶
Monday, July 30, 2012 at 4:51PM
What’s New¶
- Added support for Thinking Particles 5 in 3ds Max 2013.
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed progress percentage display in status bar.
Frost 1.3.0¶
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 4:39PM
What’s New¶
- Added support for 3ds Max 2013.
- Added .PTX to .PRT particle file converter.
Installer and Path Changes¶
- Split into separate 32-bit and 64-bit installers.
- Moved license server files.
- On 64-bit Windows: C:Program Files (x86)ThinkboxLicenseTools
- On 32-bit Windows: C:Program FilesThinkboxLicenseTools
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed “evaluate while hidden” problem in some cases.
- Fixed a bug that could cause holes in anisotropic mesh.
Frost 1.2.0¶
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 9:37PM
What’s New¶
- Switched to a new “Thinkbox” license file.
- If you are using a floating license, then you will also need to install a new “Thinkbox” vendor daemon on your license server.
- All users who purchased Frost are entitled to an updated license file free of charge. Please contact our sales department for a new license file.
- Added automatic license server discovery.
- New End-User License Agreement.
- The default install folder has changed from “Frost” to “FrostMX”.
- The Convert Particle Files dialog now has an option to scale the Color channel.
User Interface Changes¶
- The “Add…” dialog boxes for Particle Objects and Particle Geometry now show frozen and hidden objects by default.
- New Convert Particle Files dialog.
Bug Fixes¶
- Fixed an issue that could produce invalid channel values when using Anisotropic meshing. This could appear as a “infinite velocity in pre-transform output mesh” warning.
- The Frost Log Window’s Logging Level checkbox should now match the logging level set through MAXScript.
Frost 1.1.2¶
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 4:54PM
What’s New¶
- Support for 3ds Max 2012.
- An option to display render quality particles in the viewport. This checkbox is found in the Meshing rollout.
- File converter from .PTS and .XYZ to .PRT.
- “Nearest Frame Velocity Offset” motion blur mode. This is intended as a workaround for renderers that do not support the normal “Frame Velocity Offset” mode.
- Particles from RealFlow Particle Loaders are no longer deleted based on their Life Span. (The Life Span is set from the Particle Size “G/F Life”. The G/F Life defaults to 20 frames, which caused particles to be deleted unexpectedly.)
Enhanced thinkingParticles Support¶
- Channel value fixes. In particular, the Orientation channel works as expected now.
- Now uses named data channels. For example, if you have a data channel named Radius, it will be used instead of the size and scale.
- You can now filter particles by thinkingParticles group.
Particle File Changes¶
- Broader CSV file support:
- Added support different column separators (comma, semicolon, colon, tab, space)
- Added support for different numbers of columns without a header
- PRT file performance improvements.
- Fix errors when reading a PRT file with a float16 Position channel.
User Interface Changes¶
- New dialog for choosing Particle Flow Events and Thinking Particles Groups.
- Particle Flow Events are now listed only under sources which they are connected to.
- Show tooltips for wide list items. File list tooltips show the file’s full path.
- Lists are updated when object names change (for example particle objects, particle flow events, etc).
- Particle Flow Events and Thinking Particles Groups are removed when their parent is removed from the particle objects list.
Presets Changes¶
- Fix for file and directory names beginning with certain letters (such as n and r).
- Fix broken presets (Enable Radius Scale checkbox, Relative/Absolute Res. radio button, Absolute Spacing Render and Viewport).
- Added missing presets (Velocity To Map Channel checkbox and channel #).
- Invalid preset name characters are now replaced with a “-” (dash) instead of failing to save.
- Prompt before overwriting an existing preset file.
Installer Changes¶
- Should now install all required system files.
- “Add to 3ds Max” should appear even if you didn’t have the required system files installed in advance.
- Fixed installer for 3ds Max 2009 64-bit. It used to install the wrong version of tbb.dll.
Bug Fixes¶
- Fix Metaballs incorrectly getting zero channel values.
- Fix Frost objects disappearing from V-Ray render when they are selected in the viewport.
- Fix crash when saving Frost mesh as an .OBJ file using the ObjExp exporter.
- Fix crash issues when using mesh vertices as particles.
- The render mesh is now enabled using the “Enable in Render” checkbox, independent of the “Render using Viewport Settings” checkbox.
- Union of Spheres channels are now taken from the particle whose shell is closest to the surface, instead of from the particle whose center is closest to the surface.
- Fix Zhu/Bridson vertex refinement for low resolutions.
- Fix drop-down menu size in 3ds Max 2009.
- Fix phantom particles from Slice modifier.
