Phoenix FD 3.05 for 3ds Max and Maya

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey everyone,

Today we are releasing a new version of Phoenix for both 3ds Max and Maya. It contains many fixes and here are the important improvements and new features as well:
- Support for Maya 2018;
- Up to 30% faster simulation compared to 3.04 and 3.00.01;
- New Force Preview which you can use to check how Phoenix as well as native Max and Maya forces will affect the simulation;
- New method for slowing down fire/smoke simulations without resimulation (check the example videos here: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...Input-FrmBlend );
- Resimulation of Phoenix VDB caches and load and restore from Phoenix VDB caches.;
- Stronger Approximate Scattering for brighter regions and lower scattering for the darker regions of the same volume;
- [Maya only] Support for nParticles as source emitters and nParticles with isntanced shapes as emitters and obstacles.
- Support for 3ds Max modifiers on FollowPath splines;
- A new command line cache_converter tool for converting already existing AUR cache sequences to OpenVDB without simulating again;
- Reworked entirely the C++ SDK.

Important bug fixes in this version are:
- [3ds Max only] Fixed crashes when simulating using any Phoenix textures in 3ds Max 2018 Update 2 and Update 3;
- Fixed issues with time-bend resimulation present in 3.04;
- Liquid particles penetrated the walls of thin static or moving geometries in large numbers. This has largely improved, but still needs some more work;
- Fixed fire/smoke simulation instabilities with huge veliocities coming in through open walls;
- Fire/smoke simulations with Buffered or PCG conservation may produce different results on each run;
- Many fixes for the FLIP solver simulation.
- Fixes for issues with the Ocean Horizon rendering present in 3.04.

You can check the 3ds Max builds here:
https://download.chaosgroup.com/?product=46&platform=49
and the Maya builds here:
https://download.chaosgroup.com/?product=46&platform=48

And here are the complete changelogs as well:
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/PHX3MAX/3.05.00
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/PHX3MAYA/3.05.00

Cheers and happy simming

[rporter8555]

I have aur cache from build 3.04.03 Build 1711037811.
Do I need to remake the sim or reconstruct the container with 3.05?
Thanks!
Ron

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

No need to do that. Do you have any issues with an older scene?

Cheers!

[rporter8555]

I found an issue...maybe...
Running my ship-on-the-ocean project.
I had run the previous sim thinking I did not need to export particles, and did not have the liquid channel turned on, this to conserve hard drive space.
Now with the new version installed, I attempted to re-simulate splash and foam on aur cache from the previous version, got a message in the log that the Liquid Particle channel is missing. Must enable it in the output panel and simulate again before resimulating.
I will relaunch the sim with the new version, but I may have waited on upgrading the farm to the new version had I known...

Edit> Frame zero aur cache file size with the liquid particle export turned on, increased from 22mb to 164mb. Frame 1 aur cache file size is up from 11mb to 186mb.
I am going to try again from beginning with new sim.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Indeed, this is expected - you need the liquid particles in order to do a resim, and the position channel for a large number of particles takes quite a lot of space.