Official release

Date – 16 June, 2020

Download – Build 4.20.00


With Phoenix FD 4.20 we added support for V-Ray 5 and for 3ds Max 2021.

We also improved our Standalone and 3ds Max previews and added support for Particle Shader Fog mode rendering with V-Ray GPU, and we also added support for particle displacement for Fog mode. Particle Shaders can now be rendered in V-Ray CPU IPR as well.

We improved TexUVW for smoke simulations and implemented filling an emitter's volume with TexUVW and RGB.

Once more we did many changes under the hood so we can develop faster, and as usual we fixed many bugs.



  Support for V-Ray 5

  Support for 3ds Max 2021

  Use surface texture maps or vertex color for Volume Brush and Volume Inject modes; Now you can fill volumes with RGB or TexUVW and melt them.

  Support for Particle Shaders in Fog mode in V-Ray Next GPU and V-Ray 5 GPU

  Support for Particle Shaders in V-Ray CPU IPR

  Velocity Streamline Preview ported to 3ds Max from the Standalone Preview

  Particle Preview in the Standalone Preview


  Allow the RGB channel to be transported with Fuel like it does with Smoke

  Do not interact with 3ds Max splines as fluid obstacles or emitters unless they are extruded

  Support for displacement in Fog mode of the Particle Shader

  Delete Color Gradient points with Backspace

  Use fully transparent black background color when saving images

  Option to disable the Particle Preview Color Scaling

  Sped up and using less memory for blending frames having Grid Velocity or liquid particles (when using Time Bend controls)

  Render Fire without cache data just by offsetting the Fire Opacity curve above zero (Physically Based must be below 1.0)

  Save images in TIFF format

  Optimized the Velocity Streamlines Preview when the Auto Reduction is off

  Split the Log and Info windows

  Renamed the executable from 'standalone_previewer' to 'phoenix_previewer'

  New A_GetGridSize, $.getGridSize and $.getVersion MaxScript functions

  Renamed 'Frm. Blend' in the Input rollout to 'Grid Blend'


  Dropped support for V-Ray 3

  Dropped support for 3ds Max 2015


  Artifacts with texture mapped Volume Liquid Sources

  The WetMap particles were born with sizes equal to 1 scene unit, instead of 1 voxel

  Could not animate the Sticky Liquid option

  Motion Velocity Multiplier of animated objects had no effect if a Phoenix Simulator with Fillup for Ocean was linked to them

  Blocky artifacts around submerged geometry with disabled Clear Inside, when simulating with Fillup For Ocean

  Crash when deleting Active Body originals which had MassFX Rigid Body modifier applied

  Incorrect TexUVW on the borders of smoke simulations

  The Emit Mode was loaded as Surface Force from saved scenes if any of its emitters were geometries, since Phoenix FD 4.0

  Border Fade did not affect fire in Own Opacity mode

  Crash when rendering a Simulator which is picked directly into a Particle Shader, since Phoenix FD 4.10

  Random crash during sequence render with Liquid simulator checkbox enabled in the Particle shader and Displacement turned on

  Canceling the 'Building Fog' pre-pass did not stop the rendering

  Ocean Mesh was not constructed properly when Stereo Camera was used with FoV larger than 180

  Motion Blur rendered differently with and without modifiers applied to the Phoenix Mesh

  AUR files where the grid data was over 8GB were unreadable

  Incorrect positions of recently born particles when retiming a simulation with adaptive grid

  The green Simulator grid box preview did not account for Resimulation Amp. Resolution

  The Viewport GPU Preview disappeared if the Simulator was flipped by using a negative scale

  When Flip Up Axes was enabled the caches were rotating on every reload

  Could not type in manually in the Timeline Input box

  Crash when selecting out of range start or end for saving a sequence

  GPU Preview was displaying brighter on the first render pass

  If the preview window was resized, saving an image with *.bmp extension produced a skewed picture

  The Slice Level slider was not working in negative direction if Z axis was chosen

  Phoenix's Atmosphere Gamma Correction was ignored in V-Ray Standalone and was always 1.0

  Crash when creating a toolbar preset that uses discharge modifiers and then undoing

  Cropped user interface for the PFlow Test operator, since Phoenix FD 3.99

  Crash when rendering with custom V-Ray for 3ds Max install with 'VRay=' instead of 'V-Ray main plug-ins=' in plugin.ini

  aurloader_s required missing vfree and vmalloc symbols