Thinkinetic has released Pulldownit 5.5 for Maya, the latest version of its shattering and dynamics plugin for visual effects and game development work.

It’s a workflow- and performance-focused update, extending the plugin’s shattering tool and bounded cracks feature, updating the dynamics solver, and introducing support for Maya’s Cached Playback system.

Workflow and performance updates to shattering, bounded cracks, and dynamics
The release updates Pulldownit’s Shatter It tool, which pre-fractures geometry in a scene before applying dynamics, with users now able to reposition or discard shatter centres by clicking directly in the viewport.

The tool is also now multi-threaded, with shattering now “8x faster” than Pulldownit 5.0.

Thininetic has also updated the Bounded behaviour introduced in Pulldownit 5.0, which controls how far the distance detached fragments can move from the crack that created them.

Users can now turn fragments dynamic on a specified frame, making it possible to cause cracks to tear the surface of an object along their entire length simultaneously.

Workflow improvements include the option to create or modify for parameters for several cracks at once, and updates to the dynamic solver to generate better results with the default parameters.

Pulldownit also now supports Maya’s Cached Playback system once their keyframes have been baked, which should improve viewport playback.

Pricing and availability
Pulldownit 5.5 is available for Maya 2018+. The software is rental-only. Node-locked licences now cost €280/year (around $305/year). Floating licences cost €350/year ($380/year).

At the time of writing, the 3ds Max edition of the plugin has not been upated to version 5.5.

 
Read an overview of the new features in Pulldownit 5.5 for Maya on Thinkinetic’s blog

Read a full list of new features in Pulldownit 5.5 in the online changelog

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