INSYDIUM NeXus for Blender

NeXus has been rebuilt from the ground up for Blender, bringing GPU-accelerated particle simulation with real-time viewport feedback and fast iteration. From fluid dynamics and fire to organic spreading effects and constraint-based dynamics, everything runs on the GPU.

Powered by Theron™

Theron is our new GPU simulation engine. It is built on a modern Vulkan foundation with our own compute core, so nothing waits on your CPU. Simulations solve quickly, scale to high particle counts and update in the viewport while you work.

Vulkan is why it runs where you do: NVIDIA, AMD and Intel on Windows and Linux, and Apple Metal on macOS. You get the power of a low level compute platform without being tied to one GPU vendor.

Already know NeXus in Cinema 4D? Most of it carries straight over. The great majority of modifiers, forces and features are the same and behave the same way, so your experience and your training transfer directly. What changes is how you add things and wire them up in Blender.

Show us what you make

Out now

NeXus for Blender is out now. An INSYDIUM Customer Account is required for your licence and downloads. If you already have an account you are all set. If not, create a Customer Account to get started.

Licensing

One system, one workflow

No single solver is right for every shot, so NeXus has four for liquids and granular material: PBD, SPH, FLIP and APIC. Alongside them sit a full volumetric solver for fire, smoke and explosions, a particle solver and over 40 modifiers covering emission, forces, motion, collisions, meshing and per particle logic.

The liquids, granular material and secondary particles share one particle system, so the parts work together. Foam reads the liquid solver's own surface field rather than guessing from a bag of points. The volumetric solver both feeds off those particles and drives them, so one turbulence force can shape your liquid and your smoke from a single set of settings.

Every one of them runs on Theron, so the whole range sits on one engine rather than each part arriving with a foundation of its own.

All of it lives in one add-on, inside Blender. One purchase, one licence, one workflow and one place to ask for help, instead of collecting tools that each solve a piece of the job and then stepping outside Blender for the rest.

What's Included

Simulation

• nxConstraints: particle constraint solver with multiple constraint types
• nxDendrite: grow branching dendritic structures from particles
• nxExplosiaFX: fire and smoke
• nxFlock: flocking behaviour
• nxFluids: liquid and granular simulation with PBD, SPH, FLIP and APIC solvers
• nxFoam: generate foam from fluid simulations
• nxInfectio: infection and contagion spread between particles
• nxLiquid: fast liquid setup with Fill and Flow emission and a one-click FLIP build
• nxSheeter: insert particles into thin fluid sheets to keep the film intact

Emission, Meshing and Curves

• nxEmitter: the source of particle birth
• nxGenerator: instance meshes at every active particle position
• nxMesher: generate a polygon mesh from particle emitters
• nxTrail: particle trails as a viewport overlay or curves
• nxUpres: upres particles from source to destination emitters

Forces

• nxAttract: attract particles towards the modifier or target objects
• nxAvoid: make particles avoid specified objects
• nxDrag: apply aerodynamic drag to particles
• nxExplode: explode particles outward from a point
• nxFlowField: guide particles along a flow field, now with a speed gradient, data mapping and per-source falloff controls
• nxGravity: apply gravity force to particles
• nxSplash: splash cone effects that push particles outward
• nxTurbulence: turbulence noise force
• nxVorticity: vorticity confinement force
• nxWind: apply wind force to particles

Motion and Shaping

• nxBlend: blend parameters between neighbouring particles
• nxCover: cover target object surfaces
• nxDirection: layered control of particle direction
• nxFollowGeo: follow geometry surfaces or edges
• nxPush: push particles apart to prevent overlapping
• nxRotate: apply rotational force to particles
• nxScale: scale geometry, radius or mass with layered operations
• nxSpeed: layered control of particle speed
• nxSpin: layered control of particle rotation
• nxSticky: stick particles to object surfaces
• nxWave: wave motion using noise patterns

Interaction and Control

• nxCollider: collide particles with mesh objects
• nxColor: layered particle colour control
• nxKill: kill particles by volume, objects or count
• nxLimit: limit particle properties with layered operations
• nxPPCollisions: particle to particle collisions
• nxQuestion: per-particle conditional logic, now with Quill, an AI assistant that can build your question logic for you

Preview Videos

Watch the previews on YouTube

System Requirements

Requires Blender 4.3 or later. Every version from 4.3 onwards is supported, including Blender 4.5 LTS and Blender 5 and newer. NeXus is installed via the Blender Extensions platform, which was added in Blender 4.3. Blender 4.5 LTS has long-term support until July 2027.

NeXus is GPU-accelerated, so you will need a modern GPU with up-to-date drivers and at least 4GB of VRAM. On Windows and Linux this requires Vulkan 1.3. On macOS it requires Metal 3.

NeXus uses online licensing. It contacts our licence server to check your licence, so you need an active internet connection to activate it and to run it. This is not an offline product.

Operating System

• Windows 8.1 or later, 64-bit. You also need the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x64), which most machines already have.
• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later. On Intel Macs, Blender itself stops at 4.5 LTS.
• Linux with glibc 2.31 or later, for example Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Anonymous Usage Statistics

INSYDIUM NeXus sends Anonymous Usage Statistics. You can turn this off in the NeXus preferences. The statistics gathered are entirely anonymous; no personal information is stored.

The Python add-on layer is GPL-3.0-or-later. It drives a proprietary compiled simulation engine.