New Voxel and Particle Tuners
Change each voxel and particle's properties during simulation, and use customizable conditions to delete particles.
Active Bodies
Float your objects over pools or wash them away in floods with basic rigid body simulation for Phoenix liquids.
Tex UVW
Transport texture coordinates along fluids during simulation and use them for advanced render-time effects.
Foam Texture
Add foam over the generated infinite ocean when using the Phoenix FD Ocean texture.
Standalone Cache Preview tool
Load AUR, VDB and F3D cache files, preview them and save image sequences.
Combined changelog since Phoenix FD 3:
NEW ACTIVE BODIES New rigid body solver node, interacting with the Liquid Simulator. No mutual interaction between rigid bodies yet
NEW TEXUVW New TexUVW channel for fire/smoke and liquid simulations, moving with the fluid and allowing for render-time texture mapping of surfaces and volume color and opacity, as well as for adding displaced detail moving with the fluid in all render modes
NEW VOXEL TUNER New Voxel Tuner node allowing to change any grid channel during simulation depending on conditions based on grid channel values, textures or distance to meshes
NEW PARTICLE TUNER New Particle Tuner node allowing to change any particle channel or delete particles during simulation depending on conditions based on particle channel values
NEW PREVIEW New Standalone Previewer tool for AUR, VDB and F3D cache files, much faster than the 3ds Max and Maya viewports and currently showing voxels and a new velocity streamline preview
NEW FOAM TEXTURE Foam Texture implemented in Maya
NEW GRID SOLVER Simulate the RGB channel for Drag particles
IMPROVED INSTALLATION Now Phoenix FD can load in Maya and simulate without V-Ray installed
IMPROVED INSTALLATION Ship the Visual C++ redistributable with the Phoenix installer and install it silently in the end, if needed
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Make the Foam Falling Speed vary depending on the bubble sizes
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Apply the Initial Vel. Rand. option not just to newborn Splash, but to splitting splash particles as well
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Optimized Birth Volumes
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Improve the CPU core usage of the Initial Fill Up phase in FLIP simulation
IMPROVED GRID SOLVER Represent all drag particles in the scene using the keyword "Drag" in the Clear Channels field and Affect fields of forces
IMPROVED VOLUME SHADER Renamed 'Fade Out' to 'Border Fade' and changed it from voxels to world units
IMPROVED PARTICLE SHADER Speed up and improve CPU utilization for Optimizing Particle Congestion with large cache files
IMPROVED RENDER CURVES Copy-paste support for render gradients and curves
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Sped up Grid RGB channel saving to compressed AUR cache files up to 8 times
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Save and load Grid Viscosity from VDBs created by Phoenix
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Sped up loading of VDB caches by reading their min-max channel ranges from metadata instead of calculating them
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Added cache info to VDB caches describing which version of Phoenix FD was used during simulation
IMPROVED PREVIEW Option to color the particle preview according not just to Speed, but to Age, Size and Viscosity as well
IMPROVED PREVIEW Better viewport performance with many particle systems in a single Simulator
IMPROVED GPU PREVIEW Multithreaded the data gathering pre-process of the GPU Preview
IMPROVED STANDALONE PREVIEW GPU Preview for smoke in the Standalone Preview
IMPROVED VRSCENES Do not load caches while the timeline changes during sequence vrscene export or render
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Display the total number of particles in the Cache File Content list in the Simulation rollout
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Enabled Motion Velocity in Sources by default for new scenes
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Changed Mapper's Initializer option to off by default for new scenes
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Renamed "Use Light Cache" to "Volume Light Cache" so it's not confused with V-Ray's Light Cache
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Added new Shelf, Outliner and Phoenix menu icons for the Phoenix nodes
IMPROVED MAYA INTEGRATION Name the Linux '.so' libraries in the plug-ins directory '.phxso' so they don't appear in the Plug-in Manager window
IMPROVED MAYA INTEGRATION Open URLs in the default OS browser instead of Edge under Windows
IMPROVED SDKRenamed aura_ver.h to phoenix_ver.h, and aurinterface.h to phx_cache_interface.h
IMPROVED SDK Removed grid and particle channel defines from phx_cache_interface.h, and renamed GridChannels::ChU/V/W to ChRed/Green/Blue, and ParticleChannels::ChR to ChSize in phx_cache_interface.h
IMPROVED SDK Removed the frameTime2contentTime() member of PhoenixSimInterface. Now only PhoenixFrameDataInterface::frameTime2contentTime() should be used
REMOVED PHOENIX FD Dropped support for Maya 2015
FIXED SCENE BODY INTERACTION Hang during simulation if interacting with geometries with zero-area triangles
FIXED GRID SOLVER Random hang when stopping a fire/smoke simulation affected by a force and starting it again
FIXED GRID SOLVER Some voxels lose velocity and freeze using Massive Vorticity
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Exporting Viscosity channel affected the simulation even when the Viscosity was set to 0
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Some FLIP particles could have a slightly negative Age when born from Surface Force sources
FIXED FLIP SOLVER The FLIP simulation took increasingly longer time and was quick again after restore
FIXED VOLUMETRIC SHADER Crash with caches over 2.1 billion voxels with Phoenix Light Cache, since Phoenix FD 3.12
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Reflections of excluded area lights still showed up on a Particle Shader's Bubbles/Splashes
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Crash when rendering many overlapped particles, since Phoenix FD 3.14
FIXED RENDER ELEMENTS Memory leak with render elements enabled in Volumetric mode
FIXED MESHER Crash with high Ocean Subdivs and Mesh Smoothing with enabled Use Liquid Particles
FIXED MESHER Mesh mode with a 2D scalar Displacement map rendered with artifacts
FIXED PREVIEW Particle Preview was not cleared when hiding the Simulator
FIXED CACHE I/O Exported FLIP VDBs from Phoenix contained random values for the Smoke channel if it was enabled in Output
FIXED CACHE I/O Simulating the Fire/Smoke Temperature channel to VDB incorrectly showed the minimum data range as 0, instead of 300
FIXED CACHE I/O Drag particles exported to VDB could not render with motion blur even with exported grid velocity
FIXED CACHE I/O Differences in velocity length between AUR and VDB caches of the same simulation exported from Phoenix
FIXED PREVIEW Jittering Preview with Detail reduction and Adaptive grid
FIXED PREVIEW Voxels and velocities in the voxel preview of a rotated simulator were not billboarded towards the camera
FIXED PREVIEW Could not change the Particle Size of the particle preview, since Phoenix FD 3.14
FIXED GPU PREVIEW Images saved from the GPU Preview in Simple Smoke mode had different smoke opacity than the viewport
FIXED GRID TEXTURE Mel error when rescaling a Grid Texture channel if the Grid Texture was not selected in the attribute editor
FIXED OCEAN TEXTURE Vertical Offset of the Ocean Texture did offset the displaced ocean horizontally
FIXED OCEAN TEXTURE Bucket artifacts when rendering an Ocean Texture used as a color map for a material
FIXED OCEAN TEXTURE Displaced Cap Mesh using Ocean Texture was offset from the Simulator box if using offset for the Ocean Texture
FIXED OCEAN TEXTURE Fixed differences between 3ds Max and Maya's Phoenix oceans
FIXED BODY FORCE Crash when simulating using a Body Force node without an object, since Phoenix FD 3.13
FIXED MAPPER Mapper's Initializer option was not working with Liquid simulators
FIXED MAYA INTEGRATION If the Simulation license dropped during Maya batch simulation, Phoenix did not try to re-acquire it and canceled the simulation
FIXED USER INTERFACE Simulation remaining time was wrong after pausing or restoring
FIXED SUBMITTING SIMULATIONS Overriding the cache output directory with the Backburner submitter in Maya was not working
Complete changelog since Phoenix FD 3.99.00 Beta:
NEW FOAM TEXTURE Foam Texture implemented in Maya
IMPROVED ACTIVE BODIES Added the Active Bodies and the original geometry to separate render layers
IMPROVED ACTIVE BODIES Set the original objects' visibility of the Active Bodies to Bounding Box
IMPROVED ACTIVE BODIES Do not inherit the positions of Active Body originals in the hierarchy, so animated Active Bodies won't move faster than the originals
IMPROVED GRID SOLVER Represent all drag particles in the scene using the keyword "Drag" in the Clear Channels field and Affect fields of forces
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Make the Foam Falling Speed vary depending on the bubble sizes
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Improve the CPU core usage of the Initial Fill Up phase in FLIP simulation
IMPROVED TEXUVW Emit TexUVW from emitters with mapped textures
IMPROVED TEXUVW Emit changing TexUVW values over time from Sources
IMPROVED PARTICLE TUNER Now the Particle Tuner can affect the particle scalar speed and the separate X/Y/Z components of the particle velocity, as well as the R/G/B components of the particle RGB
IMPROVED PARTICLE TUNER Value expression items can now read the particle scalar Speed channel, as well as the Velocity along X, Y and Z
IMPROVED VOXEL TUNER Now the Voxel Tuner can affect the separate X/Y/Z components of the voxel velocity, as well as the R/G/B components of the voxel RGB
IMPROVED VOLUME SHADER Renamed 'Fade Out' to 'Border Fade' and changed it from voxels to world units
IMPROVED INSTALLATION Ship the Visual C++ redistributable with the Phoenix installer and install it silently in the end, if needed
IMPROVED EXPRESSIONS Create and delete expression items via a right click menu
IMPROVED EXPRESSIONS Copying of Voxel and Particle Tuners now works by using Duplicate Special with enabled 'Duplicate input graph' and 'Assign unique name to children nodes'
IMPROVED PREVIEW Option to color the particle preview according not just to Speed, but to Age, Size and Viscosity as well
IMPROVED PREVIEW Better viewport performance with many particle systems in a single Simulator
IMPROVED GPU PREVIEW Multithreaded the data gathering pre-process of the GPU Preview
IMPROVED STANDALONE PREVIEW GPU Preview for smoke in the Standalone Preview
IMPROVED STANDALONE PREVIEW Option to change the background color
IMPROVED SDK Renamed aurinterface.h to phx_cache_interface.h
IMPROVED SDK Renamed GridChannels::ChU/V/W to ChRed/Green/Blue, and ParticleChannels::ChR to ChSize in phx_cache_interface.h
IMPROVED SDK Removed the frameTime2contentTime() member of PhoenixSimInterface. Now only PhoenixFrameDataInterface::frameTime2contentTime() should be used
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Display the total number of particles in the Cache File Content list in the Simulation rollout
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Renamed Active Bodies Solver "Auto-create dummies" option to "Auto-Create Center of Mass Gizmo"
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Added new Shelf, Outliner and Phoenix menu icons for the Phoenix nodes
IMPROVED MAYA INTEGRATION Open URLs in the default OS browser instead of Edge under Windows
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Exporting Viscosity channel affected the simulation even when the Viscosity was set to 0
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Some FLIP particles could have a slightly negative Age when born from Surface Force sources
FIXED FLIP SOLVER The FLIP simulation took increasingly longer time and was quick again after restore
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Active Bodies could not work in Include list mode of the Simulator
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Active Bodies with Ground Elasticity set to 1 were accelerating during rotation
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Ground Friction and Ground Elasticity were not working properly
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Friction with the Fluid parameter causes unstable behavior of Active Bodies
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Active Bodies were not moving correctly with Phoenix simulator linked to an animated object
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Active Bodies wrote in the History Undo stack on every simulation frame
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES Active Bodies affected the Phoenix simulation even when disabled from the Liquid roll-out
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Crash when rendering many overlapped particles, since Phoenix FD 3.14
FIXED RENDER ELEMENTS Memory leak with render elements enabled in Volumetric mode
FIXED TEXUVW Possible crash when Tex UVW Interpolation Step was set to 0
FIXED TEXUVW Dynamics Antitear strength and Antitear iterations parameters were not disabled when using FLIP
FIXED TEXUVW Particle 'Texture UVW' checkbox in the Output rollout got reset after enabling it and deselecting the Simulator
FIXED EXPRESSIONS Crash if switching a Value expression to Distance To during simulation
FIXED EXPRESSIONS Undo/redo of modifying expressions for Tuners was not working correctly
FIXED EXPRESSIONS The tree view text did not update when changing value expression types, connecting textures and nodes
FIXED EXPRESSIONS Clicking the navigation button that should select the second expression item child, selected the first one instead
FIXED VOXEL TUNER The voxel tuner could not affect the scalar Speed using the Buildup Time option
FIXED TUNERS Crash when a Voxel/Particle Tuner was deleted during a simulation
FIXED MESHER Crash with high Ocean Subdivs and Mesh Smoothing with enabled Use Liquid Particles
FIXED OCEAN TEXTURE Displaced Cap Mesh using Ocean Texture was offset from the Simulator box if using offset for the Ocean Texture
FIXED OCEAN TEXTURE Fixed differences between 3ds Max and Maya's Phoenix oceans
FIXED STANDALONE PREVIEW Changing the Timeline frame did reset the Flip YZ orientation of the cache
FIXED STANDALONE PREVIEW Vector velocity preview was not correctly billboarded
FIXED PREVIEW Voxels and velocities in the voxel preview of a rotated simulator were not billboarded towards the camera
FIXED PREVIEW Could not change the Particle Size of the particle preview, since Phoenix FD 3.14
FIXED CACHE I/O Differences in velocity length between AUR and VDB caches of the same simulation exported from Phoenix
FIXED USER INTERFACE Simulation remaining time was wrong after pausing or restoring