topic Re: Poor Old PFlow in 3ds Max Forum

Poor Old PFlow

J_O_R_D_A_N — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:59:37 GMT

Will Autodesk please update PFflow? what's the matter with you guys? 3dsMax was your baby, and you're pushing it under the rock....
Is it that hard to give it multi-threading performance, introduce new operators, and for the god's sake, can you in 2026 incorporate/make/code/whatever a proper out-of-the-box Fire, Fumes, Dust solver???
Yes will all know Tyflow, but Max is already pricey software, and on top of that buying expensive plugins? I'mean C'mon...
Cinema has everything built in, Maya, Houdini, Blender is killing you slowly... Heck even rise of the dead Lightwave incorporated TurbulenceFD, not to mention that Softimage back in day had way better tools for fire for example .... Aren't you embarrassed? Only software that is "poor" in that department is Max. And please stop with the Chamfers & Bevels already please? - better rename Max to 3ds Chamfer 202x ...

For example - PhoenixFD is going end-of-Life - can't you just buy it, maintain it, make it built-in part of 3ds(chamfer)Max ? Or come up with your solution??? You've got house full of programmers, for the love of God, do something about it?!?!?! And please remove NURBS from max or update it with modern and proper tools - existing ones are pure garbage, if you do not plan to incorporate normal stuff than at least remove old junk that no one is using...
You know what people are saying and thinking but handful tells you actually what's the problem!
Wake up and do something about above written, other software's going to eat up Max for breakfast...
Best Regards,
Disappointed user

Re: Poor Old PFlow

spacefrog_ — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:52:11 GMT

Have you tried tyFlow ?

Most features work without license, just read about the insanely generous limitations

https://docs.tyflow.com/license/free/

At this point, its hard for Autodesk or anyone else to come up with anything nearly as good as tyflow

BTW: the developer of Phoenix now works on the fire/fluid simulation stuff in tyFlow ( called Zenith )

Edit: oops sorry, di'nt notice that you already mentioned tyFlow, but still, i think its a valid point

Re: Poor Old PFlow

J_O_R_D_A_N — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:54:34 GMT

Yes I tried it, but free has single threaded performance similar to default PFlow, Cache is disabled, but that's beyond the point - fact is that Autodesk doesn't give a two cents about it. If a power house like AD can't update/ upgrade Pflow then they are either incompetent, lazy, or not interested at all - which one is worse, tell me?

Most valid example is Tyflow itself - one guy said enough is enough and wrote it by itself, so with all due respect - your statement just doesn't stand at all - they have world class developers and yet somehow after all these years they did not fixed/improved it... New solution doesn't have to be insanely good just good enough... But the worst thing is that they just don't care...

P.s are you planning to recompile Thinkbox's plugins for 2027? 🙂

Re: Poor Old PFlow

lauri_barnhart — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:01:39 GMT

Hi @J_O_R_D_A_N,

I wanted to check in and see if you still needed assistance, or if you found a solution to your question already? Let us know if you need further assistance by providing an update or if you have found a solution, please share it with the community so other members who may have the same question could learn from your experience.

All the best,

Lauri | Community Manager

Re: Poor Old PFlow

J_O_R_D_A_N — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:11:53 GMT

Hi,
Actually, with all due respect - regarding assistance - maybe it would better suit management or the devs at AD in order to fix and improve PFlow... and the solution is pretty simple - it is clearly described in the very first post.
all the best,
Ranko