IPR and Phoenix - is this a thing

[stelees]

Hey there,
Am I able to see Phoenix in the vray IPR? Just tweaking the volumetric options for smoke and fire in a sim and would be great to see it in real time as opposed to doing region renders to see what mess I have made of it.

Is there something I just need to turn on or tick?

S.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Works everywhere except the combination of 3ds Max + V-Ray CPU - you can workaround it with V-Ray GPU though, would this work for you?

Cheers!

[Joelaff]

Really would be helpful to not have to switch back and forth to see phx in IPR, though.

[stelees]

That worked fine, thanks for the heads up. I agree with Joelaff that it would be good not swapping back and forth just cause I am old and keep forgetting also

[georgi.zhekov]

Indeed, it is in the to do list already, adding your votes for it as well

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Aaaaand finally in tomorrow's nightlies, V-Ray IPR CPU in 3ds Max will render Phoenix Simulators and Voxel Shaders.

Cheers!

[Joelaff]

This is awesome! I just wish it had been in the build from two nights ago which we just installed on the entire farm

Anyway, can't wait to see this.Thanks.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, it probably was there already, but beware because some stuff broke in the meantime:

- On the 5th, there was the first version that covered most scenarios but caused a regression where the V-Ray Instancer stopped rendering Phoenix even in production, not just IPR CPU.
- On the 6th, the production rendering of Simulators via Instancers was fixed.
- On the 8th, I added support for the V-Ray Instancer for Simulators in IPR CPU and rendering more than 10 Simulators in IPR CPU - before that this didn't work, but I also introduced a crash that could happen on opening saved scenes.
- On the 9th, everything (we know of) was fixed.

[Joelaff]

Ohhh. Thanks for the heads up. We installed vray_adv_60007_max2021_x64_31561_install mainly to fix the super slow machines when network rendering in the BG issue. But will have to update again soon anyway.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, don't worry then - it's not in the V-Ray stable nightlies yet - only in the Phoenix nightlies.

[Joelaff]

We also updated the phoenix nightlies to: phoenixFD_adv_50101_max2021_vray6_x64_31563_instal l

So Phoenix can and does influence Vray Rendering of VolumeGrid? I thought that code came from the VRay install?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Oh, nono - the Phoenix atmosphere renders the Simulators and Voxel Shaders in Volumetric render mode, and the V-Ray atmosphere renders the VolumeGrids in Volumetric render mode.

So you got the Phoenix build that does not crash, renders Phoenix Simulators/VoxelShaders instanced via VRayInstancer in production, but NOT in IPR CPU, and you also got a V-Ray build that still knows nothing about IPR CPU - it would go into the stable nightlies a bit later, but please ping me if you need this in V-Ray for the VolumeGrids as well.

Ah, also - since I also posted this in the Phoenix facebook group and people were surprised : IPR GPU (not CPU) for Simulators has been working for many years now, I actually don't think there was a time when it didn't work. It's one of those rare occasions where V-Ray GPU is better supported than the CPU equivalent.

[Joelaff]

Yeah, I discovered that (IPR with GPU enabled) a long time ago. It can be useful for some setup, but there is usually some reaosn we can't use GPU, and so many thing work differently. So it is sooo much more convenient to get it in CPU mode. Can't wait. Would have been useful for this project. Though for this it was just using Empty VolumeGrids to create some fog that renders faster than VRayEnvrionmentFog, which I very rarely am able to coax to get to look like I want, and is terribly slow.

It sounds like that be in the future build. But that not a problem. This project is almost done!

[Joelaff]

OK. One more Q. So which version of PHX and VRay do I need to be able to see Empty VRayVolumeGrids in the IPR? I am using an empty grid with a little opacity in the smoke (Lifted the toe point in the cuvre) to get some basic volume.

It seems this *next* project needs these too

Thanks.

[georgi.zhekov]

If you get a Phoenix nightly after 11 August should be working for Phoenix simulators. In order to work with Volume Grid nodes, it needs to be picked into the V-Ray stable nightlies (this should take a few more days).
Will update the thread when it is in.

Cheers!