One click to something that moves
Fire, Smoke, Explosion and Water are tiles on the Simulation rail. One click makes the simulation and plays it, with its controls already open. Select a mesh first and Fire burns that mesh.
3D simulation
Fire, water, cloth and collisions, simulated in a browser tab.
Studio has ten kinds of simulation in one scene: fire, smoke, explosions, fluids, cloth, rigid bodies, fracture, hair, particles and an ocean. Click one to make it, scrub the timeline to run it, and render the result with the path tracer in the same tab.
Scrub it like any other animation
The timeline is the simulation. Play or drag the playhead and it replays to that frame. Bake only when you want the result out as data.
Rendered where it was simulated
The same scene goes to the path tracer. Fire lights the room, smoke shades itself and water refracts what is behind it, with no export to another renderer.
Solved on your graphics card
Gas, fluid, cloth, hair and particles run on the GPU through WebGPU, and rigid bodies in a background thread, so the page keeps responding while they work.
Ten simulators, one scene
Every image here is a render from Studio: a simulator set up with its own controls inside one of the app's starter scenes, then path traced. Nothing is painted over.
Fire
Flames burn from a fuel source, and the heat drives the motion. In a path-traced render the fire lights what is around it, so a wall flickers with the flame without a lamp being placed.
Night run starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Smoke
Smoke rises, curls and thins out as a real volume. Dense parts shade themselves and thin parts let the street show through.
Night run starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Explosions
A burst of fuel ignites, rolls upward and burns out to soot. Set when it goes off on the timeline, then scale it to the shot.
Getaway starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Water and thick fluids
A particle fluid pours, piles up and splashes. Presets run from water to honey and slime, and in a render the surface reflects and refracts like liquid.
Skyport starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Cloth
Turn a subdivided mesh into silk, cotton, denim, leather or rubber. Pin it, blow wind at it, and let it fall over the meshes you choose.
Room photo starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Rigid bodies
Give objects a body and a material, and they fall, bounce and stack. A group falls as one object, and joints cover ropes and hinges. Bake a pile to keep the arrangement.
Soda can starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Fracture
Shatter a mesh into as many as 200 pieces with glass, stone, wood or concrete settings, then let physics take them or push them apart with the explode control.
Asteroid run starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Hair, fur and grass
Grow strands on any mesh, from short and long hair to fur and curls, with length, curl, frizz and clumping to shape them. The same tools grow a meadow, and strands render with a dedicated hair shader.
Soda can starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 256 samples, AI denoise.
Particles
Emit from a point, a shape, a mesh or a curve, then push with wind, vortex, attractor and collision forces. Glowing particles with trails render as streaks of light.
Last train starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Ocean
A wave-spectrum ocean that reaches the horizon, with presets from a lake to the open sea, foam, water colour by type, and rigid bodies that float on it.
Coast house starter scene. Path traced in Studio, 1,024 samples, AI denoise.
Why Mixos
What they are good for, and where they stop
Because the simulators share one scene, they can share one shot. Smoke can flow around a mesh you pick, cloth can fall over the bed it is meant to land on, and a crate can float on the ocean. The fire in the dungeon above is lighting the same stone that the camera sees, because both are in the same path trace.
These are solvers for making pictures and short shots, not for engineering analysis, and they are bounded by your graphics card. A phone or a laptop should start with the Draft quality setting and a small box. Interactions run one way in places: gas and fluid flow around a mesh, but they do not push it. If a shot needs a film-scale grid, a dedicated tool such as Houdini is still the right choice, and gas exports to it as OpenVDB.
Getting the result out depends on what you need. Gas exports as OpenVDB with density, temperature, flame, fuel and velocity. Rigid bodies bake to keyframes, and cloth bakes to shape keys that a glTF export carries. Simulating, scrubbing and rendering to the viewport are free on every account, along with a 512px watermarked render preview; clean full-resolution renders and production files require a paid plan.
From an empty scene to a render
- 01
Open the Simulation workspace
Its rail puts every simulator under your hand. Open a starter scene or import your own model first.
- 02
Click what you want
Fire, Smoke, Explosion and Water run on the click. Cloth, Hair and Fracture act on the mesh you have selected.
- 03
Play it and adjust
Size, Density, Fuel, Flames and Light are on the panel, and Size scales the whole effect so it stays the same fire at a different scale.
- 04
Render it
Press Preview to watch the path tracer converge, then Render still for the final frame, with AI denoise if you want it.
Or ask Mixos AI
Put a fire in the brazier, have it light the room, and render a still through this camera.
Before a final render
- Set Quality to High: it uses a finer grid, and takes longer to solve.
- Let the playhead reach your frame, so the simulation has caught up.
- Look through your shot camera, since a fire placed by eye may sit out of frame.
- Turn on AI denoise for thin smoke, which is the slowest thing to converge.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free?
Simulating, scrubbing, modeling and rendering to the viewport are free on every account, with no time limit. Studio can also save a 512px watermarked render preview for free. Clean full-resolution renders and production files such as VDB, GLB or a scene file require Pro, Max, Team or a perpetual licence.
What hardware do I need?
A browser with WebGPU: current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Brave on Mac, Windows, Linux or ChromeOS, or Safari 26+. A dedicated graphics card helps a lot here, because gas, fluid and hair solve on the GPU. On a phone or an older laptop, start with Draft quality and a small simulation.
Does the fire really light the scene?
Yes, in a path-traced render. The flame is gathered into lights that stand where it burns, so nearby surfaces and smoke are lit by it and it flickers with the flame. It is a close approximation rather than exact volumetric emission, and the Light control sets how strongly it reaches the scene.
Do I have to bake a simulation before I can see it?
No. Play or scrub the timeline and the simulation replays to the playhead. Baking is only for taking the result out of the simulator, for example to keep a pile of objects where it landed or to export cloth as shape keys.
Can I take a simulation into Blender or Houdini?
Yes. Gas exports as OpenVDB, which Blender, Houdini, Maya and Cinema 4D read. Rigid bodies bake to keyframes and cloth to shape keys, both of which travel in a glTF export. Exports need a paid plan.
Do the simulators affect each other?
Some do. Gas and fluid flow around meshes, cloth collides with the meshes you choose, particles can collide and be pushed by forces, and rigid bodies float on the ocean. Gas and fluid do not push rigid bodies, so a falling crate will not be blown about by an explosion.
Read next
How to animate a 3D model
Key, retime and ease a move, step by step.
What keyframe animation is
Keys, in-betweens, and the interpolation that joins them.
Easing and animation curves
Ease in, ease out, bezier handles and overshoot.
Export animation as GLB or FBX
What carries over to an engine, and what to bake first.
