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