Table of Contents

Patch release

Date – Nov. 14, 2017

 

New Features

Phoenix FD  

  • Support for Maya 2018

Simulation

  • Resimulation over OpenVDB caches exported from Phoenix FD

  • Restoring simulation from OpenVDB caches exported from Phoenix FD

  • Load the simulation initial state from OpenVDB or Field3D
  • Option to control the randomness in velocity direction at Splash birth
  • Option to allow only expansion of the adaptive grid, but disable shrinking

Rendering

  • Stronger Approximate Scattering for brighter regions and lower scattering for the darker regions of the same volume

  • Added a new frame blending method using both Velocity and Advection Origin, producing smoother fire/smoke retiming

Preview

  • Viewport preview for visualizing the influence of both native and Phoenix forces

Particle Shader

  • Option to allow offsetting the particles vertically

Source

  • Equalized source emission from particles with 3ds Max

  • Support for using meshes from particle instancer as obstacles or emitters
  • Implemented support for using the Particle Texture and Grid Texture as masks for a Source

Curve Controls

  • Ability to horizontally or vertically stretch and flip the selection in curve and gradient controls


Follow Path

  • Added an option to break the spline into segments which influence the simulator simultaneously

Tools

  • Added a command line cache_converter tool, allowing conversion of already existing AUR cache sequences to OpenVDB without simulating again

SDK

  • Added a new interface for sampling volumetrics at render time

 

Modified Features

Simulation

  • Change adaptive limit defaults to non-zero

  • Display an error if the FLIP resimulation cannot find Liquid particles

Rendering

  • Use particle ID instead of Age channel when looping particles
  • Sped up Ocean construction

Source

  • Disable Motion Velocity for the sources in Maya by default as in 3ds Max

Scripting

  • Use Grid space for script commands by default
  • Ability to start a new simulation in the OnSimulationEnd() script callback

SDK

  • Equalized the public interface classes between 3ds Max and Maya

Removed Features

SDK

  • Removed all old public interfaces

Phoenix FD

  • Removed the "Initialize from Object" function from the Phoenix FD menu - a Source in Brush mode can be used for the same effect

Bug Fixes

Simulation

  • The General-Purpose Time Bend Resimulation was not working correctly in Phoenix FD 3.04

  • Restoring Resimulation was not working in Phoenix FD 3.04Occasional crash when the simulator is deleted while the simulation is running

  • Sampling textures during simulation without using V-Ray did not work since Phoenix FD 3.00.02

  • Resimulation might produce less smoke and temperature

  • Liquid particles penetrate the walls of complex or thin static geometry

  • After loading a cache or simulating, CPU usage remains high on machines with many threads

  • Overlapping Solid Fire/Smoke emitters in Surface Force mode emit inside each other's volumes

  • Instability with high incoming velocities through the grid walls

  • Fire/Smoke simulations using Solid emitters in Surface Force mode with Noise produce different results on each run

  • Fire/Smoke simulations using Solid emitters and Buffered or PCG Conservation produce different results on each run

  • Non-solid sources in Surface Force mode do not affect Liquid simulations

  • Foam born from Sources in Surface Force mode does not respect the simulator Foam Size and Variation settings

  • When splashes split, they form visible lines of particles
  • Big difference between Splash behavior with Liquid-Like at 0 and at 0.001
  • Increasing the Splash Threshold never eliminates all born splashes
  • Foam Rise and Falling speed set to 0 do not freeze foam particles
  • Submerged foam particles ascend high into the air near negative open simulator walls
  • The Simulate Air Effects option may create huge velocities at voxels where the liquid contacts geometry
  • Random hang when restoring the simulation with more than 1 Steps Per Frame
  • The Simulator includes hidden objects when set to Include mode, even though Exclude hidden is set
  • Crash if Adaptive Grid with high preallocation fails during simulation startup
  • Adaptive Grid's Extra Margin for Liquid simulators does not work
  • Grid artifacts with Liquid simulation using Confine Geometry with curved surfaces
  • Liquid particles get created on the back end of a moving liquid simulator with Initial Fillup, raising the liquid level
  • Missing warning when starting the simulation after adding solid geometry to a Volume source through Outliner
  • Simulation stops due numerical error without printing a warning or error
  • Overlapping a Solid Surface Force source with a non-solid body with Clear Inside does not clear the smoke

Rendering

  • Artifacts when rendering overlapping containers in Volumetric Geometry mode

  • Flickering when rendering Smoke Color based on a gradient with varying data range with Approximate Scattering
  • Crash when blending caches with Drag particles
  • Random crash when blending between frames which contain very few particles
  • Crash when rendering in Mesh mode with Surface channel set to Texture
  • Sequence render with V-Ray and Fire Lights keeps showing the lights after the cache sequence ends
  • Smoothing Particle Size is always 1 when rendering
  • Subdivided Ocean surface may abruptly change its detail with animated camera
  • Rendering in Isosurface mode using Cutter produces wrong normals in Maya
  • Using Liquid Particles for Mesh Smoothing together with Cutter Geometry still uses particles outside the Cutter
  • Using Liquid Particles for Mesh Smoothing does not take effect until the Smoothness is raised to 3
  • Warning about using local machine Input path for distributed rendering even if the path is UNC but starts with forward slashes
  • Cannot key the Playback Mode parameter during sequence render
  • Fix dark and non-uniform horizon using the Horizon Roughness option

Particle Shader

  • Bucket artifacts when rendering dense bubbles with the Particle Shader's light cache enabled

  • Particle Shader does not displace particles according to the connected Liquid Simulator's transform
  • Particle Shader's Particle Reduction parameter doesn't use particle ID which leads to particles disappearing in animation

Preview

  • Crash when enabling Mesh preview when using displacement by a Grid Texture

  • Crash when enabling Mesh preview when Surface Channel is set to Texture
  • Crash when opening the Hypershade with a Paints preset with Play Speed less than 1.0
  • Crash when rendering a simulator via mayapy with Mesh preview enabled
  • The running Simulation info overlaps the Viewport Renderer info
  • Particle channels in the Cache File Content list are wrong when using Loop with Overlap
  • Voxel Preview color can not be changed in Maya 2017 and 2018
  • Preview artifacts in Ocean Mesh mode near the camera in Maya
  • Slowdown due to Simulator reading cache files even when hidden in Maya, using Viewport 2

I/O

  • Error about not enough memory to save the cache when a particle channel is over 2GB

Source

  • Disabling the Emit Liquid source option does not stop liquid discharge in Volume Inject mode

  • Mapped source discharge by a texture does not clamp the texture input between 0 and 1
  • Discharge Modifier based on normals in object space use them in wrong scale
  • Discharge Modifier by World Speed does not work correctly with simulator attached to moving emitter
  • nParticles don't affect the simulation velocity even when Motion Velocity is enabled from the Source
  • Crash when using VRayVertexColors with Set Index as an RGB source map

Body Force

  • Body Force does not affect parts of the grid that expanded using Adaptive Grid

Follow Path

  • The Fade Start parameter was not working in Phoenix FD 3.04

  • Artifacts when simulating using a FollowPath force on a circular spline

Turbulence

  • Turbulence's Speed parameter in Maya is much slower than in 3ds Max

Mapper

  • The Mapper cannot completely freeze or exactly set velocity in the simulation

  • Grid velocity from the Mapper has Y/Z axes swapped

Presets

  • Errors when saving and loading presets

PhoenixFDGridTex

  • Crash when plugging a Phoenix Grid Texture through a Multiply/Divide node into the displacement slot

Scripting

  • phxfdBatchResim tries to restore the resimulation instead of starting it

Submitter

  • Can't submit to Backburner if the Scene Copy Dir ends with a slash