The rendering process in Chaos Phoenix is separated from the simulation process, because simulated caches contain only simulation data, and no render settings.
However, for ease of use, the Liquid Simulator object also contains a Rendering rollout, which provides flexible options for rendering the simulator grid's content.
The Rendering rollout offers multiple render modes, that can be divided into two types: Surfaces and Volumetric.
Liquid simulations are typically rendered using one of the surface render modes. Meanwhile, volumetric modes are typically used for rendering fire and smoke. |
Surface render modes generate a mesh surface, which is based on the channel specified in the Surface Channel parameter.
This is especially useful for liquid simulations, where by default, the Grid Liquid Channel is exported during simulation, which enables the simulator to voxelize Liquid Particles into a Grid Channel. This way, Liquid Particles can be used to indirectly generate a liquid surface, that can be rendered as a mesh using one of the surface render modes, such as Mesh, Isosurface, Cap Mesh or Ocean Mesh.
The meshed liquid then behaves just like any regular geometry, meaning you can assign 3ds Max or V-Ray materials to the Simulator, and there is no need for a dedicated shader. The Rendering rollout also contains additional controls for this meshing process, to customize the appearance of the surface.
Since Phoenix is very flexible, it also enables you to render liquid simulations using a volumetric render mode, to create more advanced types of effects. |
When rendering as a mesh, Liquid Particles are shaded by a material assigned to the Liquid Simulator object. However, secondary effect particles such as Foam, Splash, Mist and WetMap particles must be shaded using the Phoenix Particle Shader. The Particle Shader can shade a specified Particle System as either Points, Bubbles, Cellular, Splashes, or Fog, depending on the mode you select. |
For even more advanced control over the shading, you can use the Phoenix Grid Texture. It reads from the simulation’s Grid Channels to generate a procedural texture, which can then be used to shade the simulation wherever colors are needed.
It can also be plugged into the texture slots of a material. For example, if you want to mix together liquids with multiple RGB colors emitted from different Liquid Sources, the Grid Texture can be used to read and transfer the RGB colors to the Liquid mesh's material for shading.
Similarly, a Phoenix Particle Texture can be used to read particles and color their positions. When used to read WetMap particles, it can act as a mask to blend between two materials, for example, a wet material and a dry surface material. This way, geometry covered by WetMap particles can appear wet, and the rest of the geometry can appear dry.
UI Path: ||Select Liquid Simulator object|| > Modify panel > Rendering rollout |
Render settings are not stored within the caches themselves, so if you want to use the same render settings for another simulator or project, there is the option to save and load them as Phoenix Render Presets in the “.tpr” file format. |
Render Presets... – Opens a menu for loading and saving different presets. The following options are available:
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The proper value for the Isosurface Level parameter depends on the numerical range of the surface channel. For example, Phoenix liquids are kept in the range of 0 to 1. A value of 0 means there is no liquid in a certain voxel, and a value of 1 means the cell is 100% full of liquid. Values in between indicate a certain mixture of air and liquid. For such cache files, an Isosurface Level value of 0.5 is best for visualizing the surface between the air and liquid. Imported caches from Houdini, on the other hand, use positive and negative values to indicate whether a voxel is inside or outside the liquid volume, so a correct "halfway" Isosurface Level value would be 0.0. Please check the Grid Channel Ranges page for information about other grid channels. |
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Example: Ocean Subdivs
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