Render Sequence not working: Maya 23.3, Vray 6, Phoenix smoke

[paul_shepherd]

Sorry in advance because I'm just starting experimenting with Phoenix.

I'm not sure what's wrong, but for some reason I cannot batch render nor render sequence Phoenix smoke effects in my scene.

I made a scene with smoke, cached the simulation, Render Mode set to Volumetric, even turned off render cutter, but maya batch render never returns any images with the smoke.

The VFB works fine, but not the batch or sequence.

I tried using GPU and CPU, layers, even exporting .simscene. (though I may have done this part wrong if it's critical for batch rendering).

I got render sequence to work in a test scene, but now it's not working in my main scene.

Running Maya 2023.3, Vray 6, Windows 11, Nvidia RTX A2000

[slavina.nikolova]

Hey,

Can you tell us which are your exact Phoenix and V-Ray versions? In order to find out the exact Phoenix version you can check the About info window: Maya > Top Maya Phoenix FD Menu > About Chaos Phoenix. You can find the V-Ray version in the Render settings window > Settings tab > About V-Ray rollout.

Also, is it possible to send us over the scene that reproduces the issue, so we could check it here?


Thanks!

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey Paul,

Maya Batch rendering copies the scene somewhere on the hard drive. By default, Phoenix uses paths to the cache files such as $(same_as_output) or $(scene_path), which search for the cache files next to the Maya scene file. When Maya batch copies the scene, it won't copy the cache files with it, and the scene will not be able to load its cache files, so your fluid will not be rendered. To fix this, please change the Input path to an absolute path such as "D:/caches/frame_####.aur" so that the scene file would always be able to find its cache files no matter where the scene is copied. If you are using Resimulation, make sure to update the resimulation paths as well.

This should solve the issue.

Cheers!