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Use Timeline Start Frame | start_from_timeline - When enabled, the Simulation will run from the Timeline Start Frame to the Timeline End Frame or the Custom Stop Frame, depending on the options.

Custom Start Frame | startFrame – Explicitly sets the Start frame of the Simulation. This can also be a negative number.

Use Timeline Stop Frame | stop_from_timeline - When enabled, the Simulation will run from the Timeline Start Frame or the Custom Start Frame to the end of the Timeline.

Custom Stop Frame | stopFrame – Explicitly sets the End frame of the Simulation. This can also be a negative number.

Skip Dynamics Before Start Frame | skipStartFrames – If enabled, the simulation will jump to the starting frame at the start of the simulation. Disabling will evaluate from the start of the timeline to allow Maya dynamics to run before simulating. For instance, Maya's nParticles are sensitive to large jumps in the timeline and disabling this option when the start frame for the Phoenix Simulator is different from the start frame of other dynamics in the scene could potentially resolve issues related to this. However, it is best to cache all dynamics before using them in a Phoenix simulation.

Use Advection Origin for Motion Blur | rendUVWForMB – The Advection Origin channel will be used to calculate the fluid movement for more precise motion blur, compared to using the Velocity channel which is the default way. Note that you must first enable the Advection Origin channel export from the Output rollout and then simulate, in order to be able to use Advection Origin for motion blur. Also note that it can be used only in Volumetric, Volumetric Geometry and Isosurface render modes.

Forward Simulation | forwardSim – Enabling will first move the scene geometry and then simulate the fluid. This will fix simulation lag relative to scene changes.

Use GPU to Aid Simulation | useGPU – When enabled, runs suitable phases of the simulation on the GPU instead of the CPU, which can help the simulation speed. Currently only the PCG Fluidity (Conservation) method of Fire/Smoke simulations takes advantage of this. Currently this is not supported on macOS.

Render On Each Sim Frame | rend_sim_frame – During simulation, after each new frame is simulated, this option will start a render with your currently assigned production renderer and with the render settings you have dialed in your Render Settings Maya dialog. You need to have set a Render File Name Prefix in the Maya Render Settings in advance. In order to have the frame number in the file name, you can insert a "<frame>" token in the filename. For example, "image<frame>" will create files named "image1", "image2", "image3", etc. If you want to pad the number with zeros, you can use for example "image<frame04>", which will create files named "image0001", "image0002", "image0003", etc. You can use Render On Each Sim Frame when you leave a long simulation overnight, so you will have a ready rendered sequence when you come back to check on it, even if the entire simulation did not have time to finish. If you are doing test iterations and you don't need your fire/smoke to be rendered with production quality, you could enable the GPU Preview and use the Save Images During Simulation option instead.

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