Phoenix FD with Maxwell Render?

[IngvarH]

I'm in the process of trying to make a decision on whether to get Phoenix FD or FumeFX. I'm using 3ds Max, and the problem is I'm also rendering with Maxwell Render (which I love, by the way). I'm purely a hobbyist, after having left 3D Graphics as a profession about 20 years ago.

Is there anything I would be unable to use if I'm not rendering with v-ray? Any reason not to get Phoenix FD if I'm not rendering with v-ray?

Any input on this would be much appreciated.

Sincery,

Ingvar Hulterstrom

[flipbook]

Suppose the obvious thing to ask is whether Maxwell supports Phoenix It is normally the render engine has to support the plugin rather than the other way round .. Probably worth asking Next Limit as well.

[IngvarH]

Well, Maxwell supports openvdb, so I suppose a lot of what Phoenix FD can do can be rendered in Maxwell. I think my question is more about if there are features that demand v-ray.

/Ingvar H

[IngvarH]

Ok, thanks everyone, fumefx it is.

/Ingvar H

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

In case you are exporting vdbs from the simulation, V-Ray won't be involved in any way - after all, it's still not time for rendering. Also, Phoenix has a defscanline and a V-Ray version - the defscanline one does not need V-Ray installed. What you will be missing in this version are the Isosurface render mode (which is rarely used and Mesh mode is used instead), the Volumetric Geometry render mode which is used for outputting V-Ray render elements, and the Heathaze render mode which produces only heat-haze refraction without any visible color.

Cheers!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Regarding Maxwell in particular, for the moment only Scanline and V-Ray are officially supported - and we haven't honestly tried Maxwell for a long time. It's very likely that meshes will render out using other renderers as well since the Phoenix mesh gets converted to a native Max mesh. Volumetrics, foam and splashes, on the other hand, are shaded by Phoenix specifically depending on the used renderer, so they would most probably not work natively and you'll have to export the simulation result and adjust the render settings and render out using Maxwell. You can grab a 30-day trial build of Phoenix form the chaosgroup site - it does not have any limitations and you'll be able to check first hand how everything works.

[IngvarH]

Thank you very much for the feedback. My main interest is volumetrics, but as Phoenix FD can output VDB I can always import it back into max as a mxvolumetrics object. I'm using Maxwell for 3ds max, so it would have been easier if I could just render it directly from within max, but this way would, I suppose, work. Phoenix meshes will obviously work, and particles, if I can export them in a format supported by maxwells importer would probably work as well.

I'll just have to try the test-version.

\Ingvar H

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

I hope in the future we could implement native rendering using Maxell, which would require a joint effort from both sides. We're currently gathering votes..

[IngvarH]

Well...+1 vote from me

Have been testing Phoenix FD for a few Days now, and I really like it. But I'm still not sure if I'll be able to use it with Maxwell. One of the things that interested me was the possibility to have fluids and ocean etc. together with fire and smoke. As someone who purely does this as a hobby nowadays, it would be much cheaper than having to buy both FumeFX and Realflow.

But, as I understand it at the moment, the ocean texture can only be used for VRay, right? There is no way to convert a displaced object into a Max object that I can see. Which makes this feature unusable I suppose.

But, as I said, I'll continue with my testing.

Thanks,

Ingvar Hulterstr?m

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Oh, no - the ocean tex is not limited to V-Ray in any way - all four Phoenix texmaps are just like any other. You can plug the ocean tex as a Displacement in Phoenix natively or apply it to any mesh using a displacement modifier. Do you have any issues with it?

Cheers!

[IngvarH]

No it worked, It's just that the Max displacement modifier is unable to handle vector displacement. Is there any way around this?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, yes - in this case the only way I can think of would be using the displacement natively with Phoenix where you'll be able to get a ready mesh with the displacement applied and the camera view accounted for. That is, of course, if you want to have a flat ocean surface - applying the ocean tex to a more complex mesh would not work out of the box (in Vector mode), unless you voxelize that mesh using Phoenix by running a 1-frame simulation where you use it as an emitter with "initial liquid fill" enabled. Then you would be able to apply the ocean tex as a displacement to that mesh through the Phoenix displacement, but you would lose some mesh detail due to converting it to uniform voxels...

[IngvarH]

Hm...this is interesting. I'll have to try that. It doesn't really matter if it's a little bit more complicated, as I'm only doing images (no animation) for my own (and sometimes others amusement. There is an image I worked on a few weeks ago, where I tried RealFlow for the ocean, but it was too complicated to get the result I wanted, so I'm looking for a solution where I can get a nice looking ocean without all the complication.

Thanks again for all your help,

Ingvar Hulterstr?m

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

The only thing to watch out for is if you are doing a globe, an ocean tex or any other texture which has more features than just a noise might not look good on it any way you map it