These are small and simple tech demos showing different techniques. They are more complicated than the Тоolbar Quick Setup presets but are simpler than the big Example Scenes.
Want to follow along but don’t have a license?: Download Free Trial
Coffee
Infinite Ocean
This scene demonstrates how to set up an infinite ocean scene using Chaos Phoenix. The Liquid Simulator is set to use Ocean rendering mode which creates infinite ocean surface. The Pure Ocean option is enabled in order to be able to render the scene even without running a simulation. A Phoenix Ocean Texture is used in the Displacement slot of the Phoenix Simulator to create the waves over the ocean surface. A regular 3ds Max Noise texture is plugged inside of the Displacement Scaling slot of the Ocean texture in order to create additional variation in the ocean surface.Burning Forest
This scene demonstrates how to set up a burning forest scene using Chaos Phoenix. A Fire/Smoke Simulator with Conservation Method set to PCG Symmetric and Quality set to 100 is used. Two Fire Sources are used to change the RGB color of the emitted smoke to give it more variation. Make sure to simulate with Grid RGB Channel exported from the Output rollout. The Time Scale is set to 1.5 to save simulation time. A Plain Force is used to push the simulated smoke aside. For the rendering, the Smoke Scattering is set to Ray-traced in order to get more realistic scattering of the light through the smoke.Blending Three Materials
The scene shows how you can blend three materials in one Phoenix Simulator. There are 3 different Phoenix Sources and each one has a different color for the RGB channel. There is 1 pure red, 1 pure green and 1 pure blue.
A Phoenix Grid Texture is used to read the Grid RGB data from the simulator. Then 3 Color Correct nodes are connected to Phoenix Grid Texture (one for each color channel) and used as masks in a V-Ray Blend Material with 3 different materials used as coats.
Water Sprinkler
The scene is using a very thin Phoenix Simulator and a small emitter cylinder inside a curved tube used to simulate a high pressure water system. In order for the fluid to be directed in a specific direction the Source is using Polygon IDs of an object to limit the emission only to those faces which share a certain ID. Everything is set in real scale so it should fit in any project when imported - approximately 10 meters wide and 1,5m. in height.
Additionally the effect is enhanced by V-Ray Environment Fog under the water arc.
Honey Bubbles
The liquid particles from the honey simulation are used in a Phoenix Particle Shader. The Count Multiplier is set to a value of 0.005 so that just only a few particles will be rendered. The render mode for the Particle Shader is set to Bubbles.
Make sure to simulate the liquid with ID channel exported from the Output rollout so that the Count multiplier would always remove the same particles during animation.
Droplets on a windshield
The box is used as an emitter and for the Source's Outgoing Velocity there are two noise textures used as a mask to randomize the emission and create small and big droplets.
In the Dynamics rollout the Surface Tension to 1 so that the liquid can be accumulated in a bigger drops while travelling downwards and a Droplet Formation of 0.4 is set so that droplets can be formed. The Wetting is turned on and some Sticky Liquid is added in order for the drops to stick to the surface.
As we want some drops to stay stationary and some to fall dawn there is a Phoenix Mapper node added which sets the Viscosity for the Grid to 0.2 using an Output map. As this works on the whole grid a noise texture is added as a mask so only some parts will be affected by the Mapper and the rest will not.
Droplet Splash
The scene shows how to make a droplet splash. The liquid is emitted from a sphere with Initial Liquid Fill turned on from the Phoenix Properties. The Initial Fillup is set to 10 so that there will be some liquid at the bottom when the simulation is started. The Surface Tension Strength is set to 0.24 and the Droplet Formation is set to 1 so the liquid will break up into separate droplets.Body Force Text Fill up
The scene shows an initially filled up text mesh that spills out and gradually fills up back again. The liquid is emitted from the text and the Body Force Strength and Internal Damp are animated so they start really low and increase over time. The Gravity option in the Dynamics rollout is animated from 1 to 0 over time as well so the liquid can fall down at the start and be pulled from the Body Force after that.Liquid Cascade simulation
The scene shows cascading setup between two liquid simulators. You have to simulate first the source simulator and afterwards start the recipient simulator. The recipient simulator must link to the source simulator through the Cascade Simulator parameter in the Grid rollout of the Simulator.Fire/Smoke Cascade Simulation
The scene shows cascading setup between two simulators. The Phoenix Source clamps the texture values between 0-1 so smoke and fuel will naturally transition fine, but temperature which goes above 1 - up to several thousand Kelvin - will need to be remapped before being plugged into the source. This is why an Output map is added after the grid texture reading the Temperature channel. The temperatures for the source for sim 1 and for the brush source are set to 2000K, and the Output Amount of the Output map to 1/2000 = 0.0005.
- You need to enable Motion Velocity on the Brush source so that the velocities will be transferred as well and of course you need to have velocity exported from the first sim.
- The area which overlaps will be rendered twice, unless you put a box as a render cutter for the first sim.
- Grid-based self-shadowing won't work between the cascade grids - you need to switch to the slower but more robust Ray-Traced self-shadowing.
Wind Tunnel
The scene uses Plain Force to create the wind. The streamlines are made up of Phoenix Drag particles. They are just carried with the velocity field. The Drag particles are emitted in lines from a box, and a Discharge Modifier with a curve with spikes is used in the Phoenix Source, so the streamlines appear only at certain positions over the emitter box. The top, bottom and side walls of the Grid are jammed, in order to channel the velocity better. Only the front and back walls are open. Forward Transfer advection helps keeping the streamlines tight. Also some Classic Vorticity is used. You could experiment with PCG or Direct Symmetric conservation. Additionally, you could make the grid completely 2D and use Multi-Pass advection which has a little different feel. The Drag particles are emitted with Velocity channel and then Motion Blur is used for the V-Ray rendering.Smoke color by age
Unlike particles which have an Age channel, the voxel grid does not have such a channel, but it can easily be achieved by using the RGB color grid channel. In this scene, we emit white smoke from a Source, and a Phoenix Mapper using a Black texture Map and a long Buildup Time gradually modifies the RGB channel of the Simulator and darkens the white color over time. This way the oldest smoke has black RGB channel and the newly emitted is white.
The scene uses a cylinder emitting smoke. The Smoke Source has the Temperature set to 10 Kelvins so the smoke will fall down and the RGB channel is enabled with a white color set. The Mapper's Buildup Time is set to 2 seconds.
For the rendering the Smoke color is set to be based on Texture and an Output map is used. The Output map uses a Phoenix Grid Texture which reads the RGB channel as an input, representing the age, and then the color is remapped to create a ramp from blue for the youngest Smoke which has RGB of 1, through green, to red for the oldest smoke which has RGB of 0.
Gas stove flames
This scene consists of a very simple setup: a Simulator, emitting geometry and a Fire Source. The emissive geometry is an extruded star spline that emits through polygons with the same ID. This ID is used as an input of the Polygon ID option in the Fire Source. Of course, there are plenty of other methods to achieve this result (radial array of smaller geometries for example).Tweaking of the following options has a significant impact on the final simulation’s result:
- Outgoing Velocity value in the source;
- Grid Resolution - for this kind of a scene it's pretty low;
- Cooling - more cooling leads to shorter flames;
- Steps Per Frame - high values produce smoother flames;
- Volumetric Options - tune the fire color, light emission, shape and a lot more from here.
Hot steam
The scene uses Particle flow system as a source with a short particle lifespan. The Smoke Dissipation is set to a value of 0.9 which makes the smoke dissolve quickly. The Conservation is set to PCG Symmetric and the Quality to 50 so we can have a nice swirling motion. The Steps Per Frame parameter is set to 2 for compensating the fast moving fluid.Smoke Inside of Text
The scene uses a few spheres as emitters placed inside of the text. The text is used as Confine geometry so that the simulation is happening only inside its volume. For rendering the Smoke color is set to use the Smoke channel with a blue-green gradient. The text is used as a Cutter Geometry so that only the parts of the smoke that are inside of the text will be rendered.Colorful Particle Explosion
The scene shows a particle explosion shaded by the color of the particles. The smoke is emitted by tyFlow particles shaded by their vertex color. The RGB channel is turned on for the Phoenix Fire source and a Vertex Color map is connected in its slot. The smoke color is set to use the RGB channel in the rendering settings so that the smoke can use the particle's color.
The Phoenix Source uses the tyFlow mesh instead of the raw tyFlow particles, and this way it can access the vertex color. In order for the tyFlow vertex color data to be read correctly make sure the Particle interface option is disabled in the tyFlow settings.
Software used: tyFlow v 0.16127(BETA) from 11 August 2021, Phoenix 4.41, 3ds Max 2018