PHXFoam Question(s)

[andrezaguayo]

When you render Phoenix partials with PHXFoam, right before your render starts there is a quick progress dialog that say "Build Tree" and "Collect Part". I am just wondering what is being calculated at this moment? It is pretty quick, but I have 10 Ship simulations in one scene so I have 10 PHXFoam's for the splashes and 10 PHXFoam's for the foam.(Yes, 10 ships!! :/) Every time I am trying a test render I see this progress dialog pop up for each PHXFoam. I am wondering because I looking for any type of optimization on this task... I was thinking it would be cool if I could use one PHXFoam object for every simulation since they are the same settings, is this possible?

Also, another question to throw out there, our renders are hanging up calculating the Foam, are there any other optimizations anyone can think of for speeding up the render of foam? Thank you all in advanced.

[Ivaylo Katev]

if the render settings are the same, put all the foams and splashes in a single phxfoam shader, the rendering will be accelerated. you need different particle shaders only in case of different settings
just for information, about the collecting and building tree. unlike other techniques, the raytracing render technique requires to be able to determine which particles are affecting certain ray, and this must be as fast as possible. if we test all the particles against the ray, this will be incredible slow, hundred times slower than now. the trick that we use is a kind of "dictionary" that allows quickly to find the particles that we look for, without testing all the particles. the progress bar that you see is shown when this "dictionary" is built, it requires certain time, but it's nothing compared to the time that the rendering would take

[andrezaguayo]

Thank you so much for the explanation, just was curious what was going. As for putting all the foams and splashes in a single phxfoam I am only given the option to add one particle system to a phxfoam with a pickbox? I see in tutorials on YouTube there is the ability to add more then one to the same phxfoam.But I don't have that on my build of Phoenix or am I missing something? I have included two images of the difference between mine an the one I see on YouTube. Thanks.

[Ivaylo Katev]

well, can you tell the build number? see it in the about box

[andrezaguayo]

OK here is the info in the about box -
Phoenix Fluid Dynamics ADV for 3ds Max 2015 / V-Ray 3.x Version: 2.2.0 Revision: 24510

[Ivaylo Katev]

well, this is the official release, to include multiple objects in one shader you need nightly build. ask the support, they will explain you how to get it.

[andrezaguayo]

Sweet! finally got the nightly build installed. I was successfully able to combed all my foams into one PFthank you.