Official release

Date – 15 April, 2021

Download – Build 4.40.00

With Phoenix FD 4.40 we added support for Maya 2022.

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 shelf 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 a latest V-Ray nightly as well

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

  Support for Simulator cache files using the Transfer Missing Assets option in V-Ray's DR

  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

  Support for simulations using Z Up axis

  Build Phoenix for Maya 2019, 2020 and 2022 for V-Ray 5 on Centos 7 instead of Centos 6

  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

  Made it possible to select the Active Body's originals in the Maya viewport. They need to be manually hidden from rendering though

  Affect RGB and Viscosity using Discharge Modifiers

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

  Sped up texture mapped emitters by improving their multithreading

  The scattering strength is now equalized with 3ds Max and is correct

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

  Mesh surface from the Viscosity channel

  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'

  Support for the new VRayProxy in V-Ray 5 as an emitter, obstacle, or Active Body

  Ocean Mesh support for camera Overscan parameters

  Improved the Gasoline Explosion Shelf Quick Setup preset

  Improved the Burning Fuel Shelf Quick Setup preset

  Option to disable preview cache load during simulation or when not rendering

  Sped up viewport performance of many Simulator copies

  Support for orthographic projection in the GPU Preview and image saving

  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

  Keep the Script File path relative to the Maya project so it can be found when the scene is moved

  Delete caches from the Phoenix Shelf without a selected Simulator, using left click (there already is a right click menu on the Shelf button as well)

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

  Dropped support for Maya 2017

  Hidden the Particle TexUVW export option from the Output rollout

  Random Memory allocation error under Linux

  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

  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

  Fire Lights were visible in surfaces with Reflection Glossiness below 1

  Crash when rendering several Particle Shaders which used different values for the Particle Age Render Element option

  The Particle Shader "Fog" Mode was not rendering with V-Ray GPU 5 when Render as Geometry was enabled

  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

  Crash when simulating TexUVW interpolation with certain Time Scale values

  Crash when rendering VDB particles with V-Ray Next

  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

  Fixed several random crashes when emitting from Alembic files loaded via V-Ray Proxy. A latest V-Ray 5 is also needed

  Using certain Alembic files via V-Ray Proxy as emitters worked incorrectly

  Vertex Velocity of geometry loaded via V-Ray Proxy was ignored by Phoenix Sources

  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

  Crash during Maya Batch rendering with a Grid Texture reading the RGB channel, since Phoenix 4.30

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

  Crash when using the Legacy Viewport

  Saved images were always recorded with the default name and in the default path on Linux

  Save file dialogue was breaking when canceling it on Linux

  Crash when rendering nParticles system created by the Phoenix's Simulator particle groups with V-Ray 5

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

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

  If a crash occurred during Maya Batch, the cache files were moved from the default path to a temporary folder

  Modify -> Center Pivot did not work correctly for loaded caches which did not overlap the grid origin

  Simulators with identical shape names under different transforms rendered identical even when using different caches

  If a project was not set, cache paths did not load correctly from a scene saved with the project and with the paths pointing inside the project directory