This page provides information on the Phoenix FD Standalone Previewer tool.
Overview
The Standalone Previewer tool is intended as a supplement to Phoenix FD, allowing you to preview AUR, VDB and Field3D cache files without loading them into a DCC application such as 3ds Max or Maya. The Standalone Previewer extends existing Phoenix FD preview functionality with a custom 'Velocity Streamlines' option which traces the velocity field of the cache files and generates a streamline preview that is generally more informative than the standard Phoenix FD velocity preview.
Note that Mesh and GPU preview modes are not supported yet.
The Standalone Previewer requires a Phoenix FD GUI license.
UI Path:
Windows: C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Phoenix FD\Maya20xx for x64\bin\standalone_previewer
Linux: usr > ChaosGroup > Phoenix FD > Maya 20xx-x64 >bin>standalone_previewer
Parameters
Open new sequence – Loads a new cache file or sequence of files for preview.
Timeline – Changes the current frame of the cached sequence.
Detail Reduction –Decreases the grid and particle detail in the preview. A value of 0 means no reduction. Increase this value if the interface starts to lag due to the simulation being very large.
Auto Reduction – Enables automatic adjustment of the Detail Reduction parameter to improve display performance. The preview detail will be reduced up to a point where the preview will display fast without blocking the interface. Note that the detail will only decrease automatically, but will not increase.
Auto Range – When enabled, automatically adjusts the preview ranges of visible channels for the current frame so that important data is always visible and the preview is always quick.
Flip Y and Z axes – When enabled, flips the Y and Z axis of the cached transformation. This is useful when the cache was created with a different up axis (for example, in Maya ).
Reset Camera – Resets the position of the Viewport camera.
Show Box – When enabled, displays the bounding box of the cache file in the Viewport.
Graph Cells –When enabled and Show Box is enabled, displays a lattice with the cell sizes on the sides of the simulator's box.
Show only the overlap of – When enabled, all channels in a cell must meet the selected threshold conditions to visualize the cell.
Show Smoke – Enables the representation of the smoke.
Show Temperature – Enables the representation of the temperature.
Show Fuel – Enables the representation of the fuel.
Show Velocity Streamlines – Traces the velocity field of the cache files to generate a streamline preview.
Show Velocity – Enables the representation of the velocity.
RGB – Enables the representation of the RGB channel.
Draw just a slice – When enabled, only a voxel-thick cross-section of the grid becomes visible. This allows for a better view of occluded details and can help when previewing very rich data such as velocity fields.
Slice Level – Specifies the offset of the slice from the center of the grid in voxels
Browse – Opens a browser window to specify the directory and the name template for the output preview image files.
Save – Save an image preview for the range of the entire cached sequence.