Official release

Date – 15 April, 2021

Download – Build 4.40.00

With Phoenix FD 4.40 we added support for 3ds Max 2022 (note that the GPU preview and velocity streamline preview are disabled temporarily due to changes in the 3ds Max viewports).

We implemented mutual collisions between Active Bodies so now you can create complex rigid body dynamics with Phoenix. In order to aid scenes with many interacting objects, we added a new Property Lister window, allowing you quick access to the per-node properties of the scene nodes.

Simulations of large scale stormy oceans or tunnel waves are now possible with the new Massive Wave Force.

A new colored absorption option allows for more interesting volume rendering effects, and can also be mapped via a texture. We added support for motion blur of Bubbles and Splashes in V-Ray GPU (requires a latest V-Ray 5).

The Phoenix standalone previewer can now be fully controlled via the command line, allowing you to change options and save image sequences of cache files in all different preview modes.

In this version of Phoenix, we multithreaded all remaining parts of the simulation, and also sped up the simulation, previews and rendering significantly.

We improved our toolbar presets, added more options to the cache converter tool, and as always, fixed many issues.

  Support for 3ds Max 2022 (GPU preview and velocity streamline preview are temporarily disabled)

  Mutual interaction between Active Bodies, using the Bullet Solver option

  Phoenix Property Lister window for quickly editing many obstacles or Active Bodies in the scenе

  Absorption color for volume rendering which can also be mapped by a texture

  Render the Fully Visible Fire Opacity Mode together with the Use Probabilistic Shading option

  Render the Particle Shader in Bubbles/Splashes mode with motion blur on V-Ray GPU, requires V-Ray 5, update 1.2

  Command line interface allowing to script image saving using different preview modes and options

  Massive Wave Force allowing to exactly replicate the Ocean waves, to affect any Phoenix channel, even without Fillup for Ocean, and use any Level Of Detail of the Ocean Texture

  Option to start a render after each simulation frame is completed - 'Render On Each Sim Frame' in the Simulation rollout, to go together with Cacheless Simulation

  Sped up low res simulations (below 10 million voxels) with up to 15%

  Enabled Grid Velocity for all Simulators and presets by default

  Emit pressure from Liquid Sources In Volume Inject mode without emitting liquid

  Allow Birth Volumes to interact with the simulation even if they are hidden

  Sped up FLIP simulations with up to 25%

  A new 'Collision Margin' parameter which you can lower in order to keep groups of bodies in contact

  Affect Motion Velocity of Sources emitting from geometries and particles, using Discharge Modifiers

  Sped up texture mapped emitters by improving their multithreading

  Sped up frame begin and frame end of the Particle Shader in Bubbles/Splashes/Cellular and Points Mode, especially with huge numbers of particles

  Hidden "oceanpriority" option for controlling which is the primary ocean contained when several ones are merged

  Sped up particle compression when writing AUR files. Older Phoenix versions will not be able to read the new AUR files

  Read VDB particle channels named 'point_velocity', 'point_size' and 'point_age'

  Improved the Gasoline Explosion toolbar Quick Setup preset

  Improved the Burning Fuel toolbar Quick Setup preset

  Sped up viewport performance of many Simulator copies

  Options for specifying the resolution of the saved images

  Option for enabling orthographic projection

  -exportchannels option allowing you to write only specific channels to the output cache files

  -removegridch and -removeprt options allowing stripping of grid and particle channels from the cache files

  Allowed adding, removing and getting the Phoenix Node Properties on an object via MaxScript - new phxAddNodeProps, phxRemoveNodeProps, and phxGetNodeProps functions

  Equalized all MaxScript names for the Phoenix Node Properties options with the names in Maya

  New IPhoenix interface, with getVersionString(), getTargetString() and getCopyrightsString() methods

  Delete caches from the Phoenix toolbar without a selected Simulator

  Allowed animating all float and world unit Simulator options

  Allowed animating of the Solid, Wetting and Voxel Mode Override node properties

  Added a new 'Credits and Copyrights' window, accessible via the 'Phoenix FD' menu

  Moved the 'Preferences' and 'About' dialog from the Simulator to the 'Phoenix FD' menu

  Dropped support for 3ds Max 2016 and 2017

  Hidden the Particle TexUVW export option from the Output rollout

  Emitting Foam/Splash from rigged geometry via a Source in Surface Force mode with Motion Velocity did not set the initial velocity of the particles

  The Foam Birth Volume did not prevent foam to be born by the Splash's Foam On Hit

  Lower Sticky Liquid multiplier values in scenes with overall low Sticky strength resulted in stronger Sticky interaction

  Foam and Splash particles could be born by a Source one voxel further outside the grid's positive sides

  Liquid Particles flew to infinity when animated Time Scale reached value of 0

  Using Foam Patterns caused some foam particles to get stuck at the liquid surface near geometries

  Liquid was creeping up the walls of Confine Geometry, and Liquid and Foam particles sometimes got shot away on collision with Confine Geometry

  If an Active Body was made See-Through, starting the simulation created a clone with See-Through OFF

  The Active Bodies Ground plane elasticity affected the elasticity of the collision objects as well

  Sometimes more than 1 frame remained in RAM

  The Grid RGB channel was not visible in Cacheless frames

  Turning off Phoenix Source's Motion Velocity checkbox did not disable the velocity effect in Surface Force mode

  Volumes were not affected by the V-Ray GI engine multipliers

  Setting the Self-Shadowing of the Fire lights to None fell back to the Ray-Traced mode using V-Ray, since Phoenix 3.13

  Rare random crash or memory leak when starting and stopping V-Ray GPU rendering

  Wrong sampling of smoke opacity maps by the Volume Shader when TexUVW was enabled

  Volumetrics which used any texture maps rendered slowly and did't utilize the CPU fully with Corona 6

  Fire Lights were visible in surfaces with Reflection Glossiness below 1

  Create Lights Even If Not Renderable created the lights in the wrong positions with V-Ray 5

  Incorrect motion blur rendering particles in Bubbles/Splashes/Cellular Mode from a Simulator, moving together with an animated camera

  Disable Liquid Shadows was not working in Points mode with Volume Light Cache enabled, or Bubbles and Cellular mode, since Phoenix 4.10

  Crash during IPR of a Particle Shader in Bubbles mode with Render as Geometry ON

  Moving the timeline in did not update the Particle Shader when rendering in IPR with V-Ray GPU if the Simulator was hidden

  Rendering in Mesh Mode with Smoothing and Motion Blur enabled lost the smoothed normals

  Crash when simulating TexUVW interpolation with certain Time Scale values

  Crash when exporting the ID channel of a particle system with more than 536'870'911 particles. Older Phoenix versions will not be able to read the new AUR files

  Body Force's Spread Speed could create huge velocities if the affected channel had negative values

  Lowering the Rate of Change of the Ocean Texture reduced the effect of the Wave Force

  Missing frames in the viewport right after simulation restore

  Crash when previewing particles and simulating the same frame with less particles since Phoenix 4.30

  Auto Reduction didn't raise the Detail Reduction correctly with many Simulators in the scene

  Crash with particle preview of certain numbers of particles with Detail Reduction

  Crash when turning on Velocity Streamlines preview while having Force preview turned on

  Graph Cells did not work when there wasn't a loaded cache

  Toolbar Quick Setup presets could be created over the Active Body Solver icon

  GPU preview was stretched and skewed in ortho mode

  Particle System nodes were shown as Simulators in the Classic GPU Preview

  GPU Preview was drawn incorrectly in inactive viewports, when "Active View Only" is deselected

  Grid Texture was not updated correctly when used by multiple Simulators in fire/smoke rendering based on a Texture

  Particle Texture was not working in Corona when Render-time Only was enabled

  Merging a scene with a Simulator named the same as an existing one renamed the caches of the existing Simulator

  Phoenix textures lost any custom names when saved to a scene

  Crash when using a Phoenix Simulator as a particle source for a V-Ray Instancer using V-Ray CPU (the fix requires both latest Phoenix and V-Ray)

  Splashes Foam on Hit Amount was named 'Size Distribution' in Track View

  Repeating Undo in the Phoenix MAXScript editor window ultimately erased all the script

  Stopping the simulation using Esc/Shift+Esc sometimes worked even when the 3ds Max window was not focused

  Aborting a Simulation where the Output cache path didn't exist was not working, since Phoenix 4.30

  Submitting $(scene_path).vdb from 3ds Max for Backburner simulation wrote AUR caches