Maya 2016.5 on windows with PhoenixFD 3.11.00: phoenixfd.mll plug-in refuses to load

[vanpixelguy]

Hello,
I'm upgrading Maya 2016.5 on Windows to use PhoenixFD version 3.11.00. I have already successfully upgraded Maya 2018 to 3.11.00, and previously Maya 2016.5 was using PhoenixFD 3.05.00 successfully. The problem is that when I try to load phoenixfd.mll from 3.11.00 using Maya 2016.5's plug-in Manager I get the following error:

// Error: line 1: Unable to dynamically load : //releases/Phoenix_31100_maya2016.5/maya_phoenix/plug-ins/phoenixfd.mll
The specified procedure could not be found.
//
// Error: line 1: The specified procedure could not be found.

To check that its a DLL file I used the "file" command to query phoenixfd.mll:
phoenixfd.mll: PE32+ executable (DLL) (GUI) x86-64, for MS Windows
Same thing for Phoenix 3.05.00's .mll file.

I also checked the permissions and the folders and all files within are readable, writable and executable by user, group and other.

Question: we are using V-Ray version 3.40.03 for Maya 2016.5. Does the loading of Phoenix try to load V-Ray and is this version too far in the past to load successfully? For Maya 2018 we are using V-Ray 3.60.02 which is much more recent.

Any suggestions into how to debug this loading issue would be most helpful.
Thanks.

[georgi.zhekov]

Hello,

You got it right Phoenix 3.11 indeed does require V-Ray 3.6 or newer. You can check the Phoenix installation requirements in here - https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...emrequirements

[vanpixelguy]

Thanks for confirming what I suspected.I'll simply ask our FX artists to work with Maya 2018 if they want to take advantage of the new features. I'll remind them that the caches are not backwards compatible,