What's causing fussy detail in my smoke sim?

[Paul Oblomov]

Well I'm proud of phx. It is great, that you have that many user feedback. Can you please tell something about recently added user requested feature ?

Btw - I thought the opposite - requesting the feature again and again by different ppl should rise the priority, not lower it. I think paid plugin community has some rights Also, I think you underestimate your collegues ability to participate in all that forum/vimeo/linkedin requests. You are not alone!

Or you're...

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Of course votes from different people add up. I'm sure you are aware of the latest Phoenix developments, but there are the 3.12 new features from November, all of them by request: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/PHX3MAX/3.12.00. Instancing and X-Ref-ing for max were the tasks with most user votes in the Phoenix history every, so they naturally came first.

Since 3.12, we've been adding to the nightlies render elements for GPU volumetrics, because GPU rendering needs to be feature complete with everything available on CPU. We just upgraded OpenVDB from version 3 to 5 so we can read vdb particles which was also requested a lot (this would bring back your request for resimulating Phoenix sims over Houdini sims, that became impossible since Phx 3.0 because the FLIP solver needs particles for resim). There is now a new texture slot in the volume shader for modulating or replacing fire opacity, since so far only fire color could be affected by textures, and this is needed so we can completely deconstruct the volume shader into a more customizable set of units that can be connected any way you want - this is one of the most voted features ATM. Exporting vertex velocity to ABC for moblur from Max and Maya also had many votes and is now in the nightlies as well.

There is nothing on simulation in the above and there is a reason for this. Soon we'll be doing some private testing on several new nodes that are not in the nightlies currently, involving some of the advanced Phoenix users who are good at giving clear constructive feedback.

I'm very sorry, John, for hijacking your thread. I hope I have shed some light on the dark mysterious ways of task prioritization not just for the ever-skeptical Paul, but for anyone interested as well

[Paul Oblomov]

Tho, I'm still sceptical, vdb particles is a game changer! Why you didn't tell anyone

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

It's in the nightlies for a couple of days and I haven't updated the nightly changelog yet.

[joconnell]

I'm very sorry, John, for hijacking your thread. I hope I have shed some light on the dark mysterious ways of task prioritization not just for the ever-skeptical Paul, but for anyone interested as well

Never apologize for anything Svetlin, your team is going lightning fast in the development and improvement of the product and I understand you only have so many resources to call on!