With Phoenix FD 3.13 we have focused on adding many frequently requested features, improving usability and support for 3ds Max 2020.
Faster liquid simulations
FLIP simulations are 30% faster on average and up to 2x faster on some scenes.
Fire Opacity Texture
Now you can modify the Fire Opacity using textures in order to achieve more interesting shading results.
Support for Loading and Saving OpenVDB Point Data
Save particles simulated by Phoenix FD to VDB cache files, and also import particles from other software via VDB caches
Following is the complete changelog for this version of Phoenix FD:
New Features
Phoenix FD
- Support for 3ds Max 2020
Volumetric Shader
- Modulate or replace the Fire Opacity with a Texture in 'Use Own Opacity' mode
Cache I/O
- Saving of Phoenix simulated particles to OpenVDB caches
- Loading of OpenVDB point data for rendering using the Particle Shader
Improvements
Simulation
- Option to allow only expansion of the adaptive grid, but disable shrinking for the Liquid Simulator
FLIP Solver
- Resimulation of the RGB channel for FLIP particles
- Export of Particle Velocity for WetMap over moving geometries
- Use less memory for simulation of WetMap when 'Sticky Liquid' is disabled
Animation
- Grid RGB channel is now reconstructed from FLIP particles when using Time Bend Controls, preventing render flickering
Volumetric Shader
- Optimized volumetric rendering when Smoke Opacity is modulated by a texture
Particle Shader
- Motion Blur Interval Center support for the Particle Shader
- Name new Particle Shaders "ParticleShader###" instead of "PHXFoam###"
Ocean Mesher
- Support for rendering Ocean Mesh from multiple cameras via Batch Render
- Support for rendering Ocean Mesh with Stereoscopic camera
Preview
- Show the force preview in the box of the loaded cache, if any, and in the simulation box otherwise
Cache I/O
- Updated OpenVDB from version 3 to version 5
ABC I/O
- Export Phoenix meshes with vertex velocity using 3ds Max's 2019 built-in Alembic export into the 'Max_Map_Channel velocity' color set. Used for motion blur rendering with V-Ray Next update 1.1
- Separate export to Alembic for the different particle systems of a Simulator by exporting the "Particles [] of []" nodes via 3ds Max's built-in exporter
User Interface
- Added the running Simulator's node name to the simulation viewport status
- Renamed the Mapper's 'Time Constant' to 'Buildup Time'
Bug Fixes
V-Ray Support
- The Phoenix FD 3ds Max plugin could not load together with V-Ray builds older than V-Ray 3.6. Restored compatibility with V-Ray 3.1
Grid Solver
- Intersecting a moving obstacle with a Solid emitter left non-emitting voxels after the obstacle
- Clear Inside did not clear the volume of Non-Solid emitters in Surface Force mode in the Fire/Smoke Simulator
- Empty adaptive grid expanded by itself when Extra Margin was used and Expand and Don't Shrink was On
FLIP Solver
- Crash with 'Simulate Air Effects' and forces affecting the 'Air' system of a Liquid Simulator, since Phoenix FD 3.04
- WetMap was not equally generated over flat surfaces and might not appear on horizontal or vertical surfaces
- Subsiding liquid at the front of a long moving ocean container with Motion Inertia
- Fixed various issues with moving ocean containers producing disturbances and waves at their borders
- Trying to resimulate over a liquid cache with no Liquid particles showed different messages the first and second time
Simulation General
- Simulation restore did not go back to the last backup frame and could cause a crash, since Phoenix FD 3.12
Scene Body Interaction
- Voxelization of a large amount of small bodies used excessive amounts of memory, since Phoenix FD 3.11
- Voxelization of hundreds of geometries with very small sizes was slower on many threads compared to simulating on 1 thread
Sources
- Geometry with Initial Liquid Fill which was also selected in a Source in Volume Brush or Volume Inject mode created double amount of liquid particles and this caused explosions
- Particles with small size used as emitters for Liquid had random Discharge strength
- Sources did not emit from Thinking Particles when simulating through Deadline or Backburner
Animation
- Flickering FLIP liquid mesh near emitters when Input Play Speed was below 1
GPU Volumetrics
- When two or more Simulators had any overlapping walls, volumetrics weren't rendered correctly with V-Ray GPU
- Crash with instanced Simulators in Volumetric Render Mode during sequence render with V-Ray GPU
- Crash when rendering a scene containing any Particle Shaders with V-Ray GPU
- Crash when rendering a scene containing a VolumeGrid and a Simulator with V-Ray GPU
- Shading volumes using only textures still required a loaded cache file with V-Ray GPU
- Volumes loaded from OpenVDB caches that contain internal rotation rendered clipped with V-Ray GPU
Volumetric Illumination
- Fire Lights kept illuminating the scene after the cache sequence ends during sequence render
- Crash when rendering a volume with Create Lights intersecting a geometry with a Light Material
Volumetric Shader
- Using many chained texture maps in the volumetric shader produced different renders of the same frame when rendering repeatedly
- Could not abort rendering by canceling the pre-render progress windows
- Random crashes when rendering in Volumetric mode with Defscanline
- Volumetric Light Cache still consumes additional memory even when it should be disabled in Progressive V-Ray rendering
- Memory leak when rendering with GI and any V-Ray render elements
Particle Shader
Particle Shader particles appeared smaller when exported and rendered from a VRScene
Crash when rendering a Particle Shader without a linked Liquid Simulator, since Phoenix FD 3.12
- Slowdown of Particle Shader Bubble/Splash/Cellular rendering with linked Liquid Simulator and 'Use Light Cache', introduced in Phoenix FD 3.04
- Incorrect alphas for Bubbles mode, and cellular walls for Cellular mode Particle Shader rendering in V-Ray StandAlone
Particle Nodes
- Slowdown the second time you rendered a large amount of Foam particles
Ocean Mesher
- Ocean mesh used excessive amounts of memory when rendered with spherical panorama camera
- Ocean mesh was not built correctly when the viewport was set to Orthographic mode
- Crash when rendering Ocean mesh with Cutter Geom and Motion Blur
- Missing mesh polygons on the container border when rendering in Ocean Mesh mode
- Flipped mesh polygons on the container border when rendering in Ocean Mesh mode with Mesh Smoothness above 0
Grid Texture
- Crash if creating a circular dependency between a Grid Texture and a Simulator's displacement, when 'Skip the Displacement' was off
- Crash during fire/smoke simulation if using a Grid Texture reading the Temperature of the same Simulator in a Mapper affecting Temperature with 'Initializer' Off
- Crash when rendering a scene with Grid Texture used as a mask in a Blend material with Motion Blur
- VRayVolumeGrid could be selected as a Phoenix Grid texture Source Node
Wave Force
- Boiling effect on the open grid borders when using Wave Force with Fillup for Ocean and there was geometry over the bottom
Preview
- Voxel preview of temperature around 200 Kelvins with As Fire enabled drew bright red and pink voxels
- Preview Auto reduction did not work for the Force preview
- Constant mesh rebuild in 3ds Max viewport when the timeline start was not an exact frame
- Slow viewport preview in 3ds Max when the timeline start was not an exact frame
- When render viewport was locked, Ocean Mesh preview was drawn from that perspective in any viewport
PRT I/O
- Crash when repeatedly pressing Export PRT particles
3ds Max Integration
- Forward scrolling timeline slider while simulating and looking at the Simulation rollout hung the simulation
- Selecting 'Don't show again' on dialogues caused some messages to not appear at all even on the first run
- The warning about DR and local paths still appeared even after all Simulators were deleted from the scene
Installer
The installer for V-Ray 3 placed vray_phoenix.dll into '3dsmax XXXX for x64/bin/plugins' instead of 'RT for 3ds Max XXXX for x64/bin/plugins'