Exocortex is pleased to announce that Exocortex Crate, the highly popular Alembic suite of tools for 3DS Max, Maya, Softimage, Arnold and Python, is now open source. Also, as of today, we are no longer offering permanent licensing of Exocortex Crate, rather it is free to download, use and modify to your needs.

What is Alembic? Alembic is a standardized format for data exchange between 3D programs used for animation and visual effects. It enables you to escape the trap of only using a single 3D program. If you use Exocortex Crate you can easily exchange data between the products supported by Exocortex Crate and Houdini, Modo, Nuke, Cinema 4D, V-Ray, Arnold, RealFlow, Clarrise and Lightwave.

We, both Exocortex as well as Helge Mathee (who started what became Exocortex Crate), are doing this as thanks to the community of studios that funded the development of Exocortex Crate. The product is now mature, battle tested and highly capable. Instead of going the route of charging a high maintenance fee to our customers for what is essentially a mature product, we are opening it up to the community.

Download the Plugins Now!

You can download the compiled suite of Exocortex Crate plugins from the main Exocortex Crate webpage just by entering in your email address on the right-hand side:

This open source release of Exocortex Crate includes binaries for the following:

Maya 2015 Windows & Linux

Maya 2014 Windows & Linux

Maya 2013 Windows & Linux

Maya 2012 Windows & Linux

Maya 2011 Windows & Linux

Maya 2010 Windows & Linux

3DS Max 2015 Windows

3DS Max 2014 Windows

3DS Max 2013 Windows

3DS Max 2012 Windows

3DS Max 2011 Windows

3DS Max 2010 Windows

Softimage 2015 Windows & Linux

Softimage 2014 Windows & Linux

Softimage 2013 Windows & Linux

Softimage 2012 Windows & Linux

Arnold 4.x Windows & Linux

Arnold 3.x Windows & Linux

Python 2.7 Windows

Python 2.6 Windows & Linux

Source Code is on Github

If you are interested in the source code, and we hope you are!, it is available on Github as the Exocortex Crate project here:

We would appreciate highly community contributions to make Exocortex Crate even better, both in terms of features, robustness and performance.

Open Source Licensing

We have released the code under a dual GPL3 / Commercial license to ensure that the code stays free and also that we can provide commercial support when needed. To be clear, the GPL3 license we are using allows studio to create private versions of Exocortex Crate for internal usage without requiring them to release the source code.

Sponsored Features

We will be shifting from a continuous support model to one where enhancements can be sponsored by studios and other customers of Exocortex Crate. This will enable us to move the product forward in direct response to customer needs. Please contact sales@exocortex.com for inquiries regarding additional Exocortex Crate features you need for your production.