TP Plugin Loading

TP is loaded in 3ds Max via plugin.ini entries that are controlled by the Cebas Product Manager. You do not create these entries manually and you should not touch them unless you truly know what you are doing.

Short Answer

If you start 3ds Max and do not see a "Thinking" button on the Command Panel's "Particle System" section, then TP is probably not being loaded. If that occurs, you should use Cebas Product Manager to uninstall TP and then re-install it. If the problem persists, then check the steps below and contact support@cebas.com

Method 1 - Check the Plug-in Manager in 3ds Max:

Run "Plug-in Manager..." from the 3ds Max file menu...

This window appears and the bottom section shows what plugin entries are contained in the plugin.ini file. Scroll through the list and if you do not see "thinkingParticles6" then use Cebas Product Manager to uninstall TP and then reinstall TP and try again. If the problem continues, contact support@cebas.com

Method 2 - Manually Inspect Plugin.ini

You can also manually inspect the plugin.ini file to see what plugins Max is loading.

Max loads TWO .ini files that control plugins: plugin.ini and Plugin.UserSettings.ini

plugin.ini

plugin.ini is located in the directory where 3ds Max is installed, and is inside the sub-directory of your current language.

This example shows "en-US" because our language is set to English. Your language might be different, e.g. de-DE, ja-JP, fr-FR, etc.

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\en-US\plugin.ini

Open this file with Notepad or a text editor and look for a section called [Include] that contains a line starting with "cebas plugins"

[Include]

cebas plugins=C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\cebas_plugin.ini

[Directories]

AfterworksCommon=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\plugins\Afterworks\Common

FumeFX=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\plugins\Afterworks\FumeFX

AfterworksOptional=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\plugins\Afterworks\Optional

Civil View Plugins=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\stdplugs\(CivilViewIO)

V-Ray main plug-ins=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\plugins

V-Ray additional plug-ins=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\plugins\vrayplugins

Next, we open the file that "cebas plugins" points to, e.g. C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\cebas_plugin.ini

[Directories]

cebasdlu=C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\cebasdlu

thinkingParticles6=C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\thinkingParticles6\corephysx

tp6plugins=C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\thinkingParticles6\tp6plugins

NOTE: we are using Max 2020 so our directory paths might look different than yours.

Here we can see the cebasdlu is loaded which is required by all Cebas plugins.

Next, thinkingParticles6 loads files from its directory:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\thinkingParticles6\corephysx

Then the tp6plugins loads its files from its directory:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\cebas\3dsMax2019_x64\thinkingParticles6\tp6plugins

You can check these directories to ensure the TP files exist (e.g. ThinkingParticles.dlo, OP_ShapeCollision.dlo, etc.)

If there are no files in those directories then uninstall and reinstall TP from Cebas Product Manager. If that fails, contact support@cebas.com

Plugin.UserSettings.ini

This file controls user-based plugins and allows users to add additional plugins for Max to load.

The file is usually located in your C:\Users directory, under the username, and also in the Max version directory, e.g. "2020 - 64bit"

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2020 - 64bit\ENU\Plugin.UserSettings.ini

You might see another [Include] and "cebas plugins" entry here, but can ignore it since this should already be loaded by the regular plugin.ini in your Max installation directory.