Z Depth Rendering of Fire/Smoke

[Truffi]

Hi there!

Sorry if it has been asked before, but is there a way to render a Z Depth Pass of PhoenixFD Smoke?

PhoenixFD Liquid works just fine in Vray Z Depth, but when I tried rendering my Smoke Sim in PhoenixFD in the ZDepth Pass straight away, it is just displayed white, which is a pity cause it makes the ZDepth sequence uselss. Is there a way to get that Z of let's say a cloud?
Thanks in advance!

[ivaylo.ivanov]

I think you can get z depth with the geometry mode both in Max and Maya. AFAIK, 3ds max do not support volumetric z depth yet.

[Truffi]

Thanks. As a temporary solution I figured I use a vray environment fog with the fog color set to black. Actually it seems to work quite well, but I guess it's far from being a clean solution.

[Da_elf]

i thought vray 3 does deep rendering. wouldnt pheonix smoke be affected by that?

[Ivaylo Katev]

you mean deep export? for deep export you have to render in geometry volumetric mode