Phoenix FD 3.10 for 3ds Max and Maya

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey all,

Today we release a new Phoenix version for both 3ds Max and Maya.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91DnI9GDI5A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur9pC6-NsiA

It contains some new features, improvements and as usual a bunch of bugfixes:
- Variable viscosity added to the FLIP liquid solver. You can emit different viscosities from Sources, change them runtime with the Mapper in order to melt or solidify objects, and render them with the Grid Texture;
- Color texture added to the Particle Shader, so now finally there isn't just a single uniform color per particle system;
- The Ocean Texture was optimized, and we've added animation controls;
- FLIP WetMap particles can now stick to deforming and fast-moving geometries;
- Multithreaded AUR caches read and write. Optimized writing VDB caches as well. After this change, old Phoenixes won't be able to open caches from new Phoenix versions. New versions would open fine old caches;
- [3ds Max only] Ocean Mesh rendering in V-Ray RT in 3ds Max;
- [3ds Max only] Particle Flow operators sped up in 3ds Max via caching of Phoenix frame data - you can adjsut this from the Preferences dialogue;
- [3ds Max only] Support XForm modifiers in Volumetric render mode for the Simulator;
- Ability to reverse the direction or attraction of FollowPath using a negative Follow Speed or negative Pull Speed;
- If the connection to the license server is lost, automatically try to reconnect;

.. and some of the more important fixes:
- [Maya only] Fixed stability issues and artefacts with Ocean rendering in IPR and Production;
- Fixed many stability issues with the FLIP liquid simulator and forces;
- Fixed many cases when FLIP particles die on contact with static or transforming geometries. Deforming geometries are still not handled well;
- Handled many cases of crashing during simulation if Phoenix FD runs out of memory
- [3ds Max only] 3ds Max forces needed huge multipliers in order to work with Phoenix

.. and also since this release, Phoenix is no longer built for 3ds Max 2013 and Maya 2014.

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/3.10.00
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/PHX3MAYA/3.10.00

Cheers and have great time simulating

[walee]

is it just me, or this version doesn't seem to work with the 3dsmax vray beta 4.02.01 ?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

In this release we did not include the Phoenix builds with V-Ray 4 compatibility - only the V-Ray 3 ones are there. While it's in Beta, the V-Ray SDK changes quite often so it breaks compatibility with other plugins. It would be better to wait until V-Ray comes out of beta and freezes its SDK before we release any official support for it. For now, only the Phoenix nightlies support the V-Ray 4 Beta 1.

Cheers!

[walee]

Thank you for the answer, i will then revert to the nightly

[joconnell]

Ooh viscosity looks fucking cooooool

[flat]

- Color texture added to the Particle Shader

how to apply the gradation according to particle age ?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey, not yet possible - we have to add this to the Particle Texture and is high on the TODO list

[flat]

Thanks for the answer.

Looking forward to it!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey guys,

An important update for everyone with 3ds Max 2016 or older - there was an issue with the 3.10 build where you needed to have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 runtime installed in order for the Phoenix plugin to load successfully in 3ds Max. This is very likely to be already installed on your machine by some other software, but if it's missing, Phoenix couldn't start.

We have now updated the 3.10 builds on chaosgroup.com with builds which don't have this limitation and if you have had any issues, please grab new ones: https://download.chaosgroup.com/?product=46&platform=49

This DID NOT affect Maya or 3ds Max 2017/2018.

Apologies for any trouble this might have caused.

Cheers!