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Phoenix Zoic Wiki
*
…a few of the Maya plugin TIPS, TRICKS, WARNINGS, and BUGS we’ve encountered on the front lines of production at Zoic on the TV series “Once Upon a Time”. *Hoping others can benefit from this and/or help us solve a few of these problems.
*
TIPS
(tips n tricks)
*
PARTICLES – Use particles to drive your sim instead of trying to push around fluid with fields. *Note that velocity may need to be set at a high level for smoke to inherit motion. *Note that low grid resolution may not even register particle emission.
*
SPF LOWER LIMIT (Ardy) Typically set to 1, a lower number may give you additional detail in your sim.
*
SMOKE – using temperature (as opposed to smoke or fuel) as a basis for smoke will allow you to control emission opacity and give you more detail, but uncheck gravity from the dynamics section of your sim.
*
WATER – using temperature as a basis for water can change the apparent gravity of falling water. *Use fuel instead.
*
MAYA FIELDS – are fairly slow. *If possible, use animated geometry to initiate movement and preview results with “velocity”.
*
VELOCITY – remember to always check velocity “on” in the output section of your sim. *This will allow you to add on to your sim later via “restore”.
*
*
WARNINGS
(some of this may be basic knowledge, but may not be readily apparent to first time users)
*
SCALING (Bob) Do not attempt to scale a sim twice its cached size when rendering foam. *It will break.
*
ADAPTIVE GRID (Bob) …will not adapt past the initial bounding box if the fluid is expanding on the “jammed” side. *It also does not seem to adapt to temperature alone.
*
TEMPERATURE (Bob) You can’t just emit temperature into a sim. *It must be accompanied by smoke to render, even though there is an option to render based on temperature.
*
PHOENIX HANGS (Dave) …when referencing files. *Use import instead.
*
VISIBILITY (Bob) Anything visible will be used by Phoenix. *This includes any geometry or fields. *To exclude geometry, check the sim node under “scene interaction”. *Even hiding the Phoenix source (oil drum) will keep your fluid from being emitted. *When rendering foam, the foam shader must be included in your render layer.
*
PHOENIX RESTART (Tom) Any sim that runs for over 5 hours will restart automatically, killing your previously cached frames.
*
MAYA FIELDS – tend to overwhelm and slow the Phoenix sim. *Try using the turbulence field listed in the Phoenix toolbar.
*
RENDER SETTINGS – Max VRAY subdivs other than one will make particles blotchy.
*
MAYA HANGS - …occasionally when *a scene contains references. *Use import instead.
*
MOTION BLUR – Particles rendered with the Phoenix foam shader have a “force on” toggle that gives a fast, but way overdone motion blur that you can’t seem to control.
*
*
BUGS
SUBSAMPLING WITH CACHED NPARTICLES (Bob) nParticles do not subsample after they’ve been cached. *For fast moving particles, it means that particles will jump from frame to frame with no subsampling interpolation. *Use regular particles instead if you need to cache.
*
MOVING CACHED PARTICLES …will not emit fluids from new position. *They continue to emit at the source.
*
ANIM INDEX (Bob) …under sim node will not work on the render farm. *Seems like a great way to animate a cache, but it might be getting hung up on frames that aren’t whole numbers.
*
PARTICLE GENERATION (Bob) Having Phoenix produce a particle system produces unwanted results if trying to use motion blur. *Particles are seen streaking from a central point as they are instanced to their respective positions.
*
MOTION BLUR (Bob) Latest version of Phoenix does not produce a correct motion blur for fire.
*
SPELLING (Bob) Someone please run a grammar & spellcheck on the software – at least in the GUI! *Nothing destroys confidence faster. *My fave is under the sim/grid section checkbox “No Bellow Initial Grid”. *You can also find the word “limeted” a few times under the grid option.
*
STATIC VOXELS (Bryce) If your fluid intersects the edge of your container on a jammed axis or an axis with no room to adapt, the fluid emitted will be static and remain there for the duration of the sim.
*
RENDER GIZMO …keeps particles from being rendered within the geo, even if the reverse checkbox is ticked. *It does not, however, hide particles like it’s supposed to. *Have not been able to get this to work at all.
*
CLIPPING PLANES – Phoenix doesn’t support camera clipping planes.
*
TEXTURE EMISSION - …will not work if geo has been added to the “sim ignore” set. *The geo will still emit particles, but it will ignore the geo’s texture UV’s. *We discovered this when we noticed particles getting trapped in the geo, which would occasionally form large blobs. *Removing the geo from the sim got rid of this, but presented other problems. *One workaround has been to modify the geos with “holes” to allow particles to escape.
*
…a few of the Maya plugin TIPS, TRICKS, WARNINGS, and BUGS we’ve encountered on the front lines of production at Zoic on the TV series “Once Upon a Time”. *Hoping others can benefit from this and/or help us solve a few of these problems.
*
TIPS
(tips n tricks)
*
PARTICLES – Use particles to drive your sim instead of trying to push around fluid with fields. *Note that velocity may need to be set at a high level for smoke to inherit motion. *Note that low grid resolution may not even register particle emission.
*
SPF LOWER LIMIT (Ardy) Typically set to 1, a lower number may give you additional detail in your sim.
*
SMOKE – using temperature (as opposed to smoke or fuel) as a basis for smoke will allow you to control emission opacity and give you more detail, but uncheck gravity from the dynamics section of your sim.
*
WATER – using temperature as a basis for water can change the apparent gravity of falling water. *Use fuel instead.
*
MAYA FIELDS – are fairly slow. *If possible, use animated geometry to initiate movement and preview results with “velocity”.
*
VELOCITY – remember to always check velocity “on” in the output section of your sim. *This will allow you to add on to your sim later via “restore”.
*
*
WARNINGS
(some of this may be basic knowledge, but may not be readily apparent to first time users)
*
SCALING (Bob) Do not attempt to scale a sim twice its cached size when rendering foam. *It will break.
*
ADAPTIVE GRID (Bob) …will not adapt past the initial bounding box if the fluid is expanding on the “jammed” side. *It also does not seem to adapt to temperature alone.
*
TEMPERATURE (Bob) You can’t just emit temperature into a sim. *It must be accompanied by smoke to render, even though there is an option to render based on temperature.
*
PHOENIX HANGS (Dave) …when referencing files. *Use import instead.
*
VISIBILITY (Bob) Anything visible will be used by Phoenix. *This includes any geometry or fields. *To exclude geometry, check the sim node under “scene interaction”. *Even hiding the Phoenix source (oil drum) will keep your fluid from being emitted. *When rendering foam, the foam shader must be included in your render layer.
*
PHOENIX RESTART (Tom) Any sim that runs for over 5 hours will restart automatically, killing your previously cached frames.
*
MAYA FIELDS – tend to overwhelm and slow the Phoenix sim. *Try using the turbulence field listed in the Phoenix toolbar.
*
RENDER SETTINGS – Max VRAY subdivs other than one will make particles blotchy.
*
MAYA HANGS - …occasionally when *a scene contains references. *Use import instead.
*
MOTION BLUR – Particles rendered with the Phoenix foam shader have a “force on” toggle that gives a fast, but way overdone motion blur that you can’t seem to control.
*
*
BUGS
SUBSAMPLING WITH CACHED NPARTICLES (Bob) nParticles do not subsample after they’ve been cached. *For fast moving particles, it means that particles will jump from frame to frame with no subsampling interpolation. *Use regular particles instead if you need to cache.
*
MOVING CACHED PARTICLES …will not emit fluids from new position. *They continue to emit at the source.
*
ANIM INDEX (Bob) …under sim node will not work on the render farm. *Seems like a great way to animate a cache, but it might be getting hung up on frames that aren’t whole numbers.
*
PARTICLE GENERATION (Bob) Having Phoenix produce a particle system produces unwanted results if trying to use motion blur. *Particles are seen streaking from a central point as they are instanced to their respective positions.
*
MOTION BLUR (Bob) Latest version of Phoenix does not produce a correct motion blur for fire.
*
SPELLING (Bob) Someone please run a grammar & spellcheck on the software – at least in the GUI! *Nothing destroys confidence faster. *My fave is under the sim/grid section checkbox “No Bellow Initial Grid”. *You can also find the word “limeted” a few times under the grid option.
*
STATIC VOXELS (Bryce) If your fluid intersects the edge of your container on a jammed axis or an axis with no room to adapt, the fluid emitted will be static and remain there for the duration of the sim.
*
RENDER GIZMO …keeps particles from being rendered within the geo, even if the reverse checkbox is ticked. *It does not, however, hide particles like it’s supposed to. *Have not been able to get this to work at all.
*
CLIPPING PLANES – Phoenix doesn’t support camera clipping planes.
*
TEXTURE EMISSION - …will not work if geo has been added to the “sim ignore” set. *The geo will still emit particles, but it will ignore the geo’s texture UV’s. *We discovered this when we noticed particles getting trapped in the geo, which would occasionally form large blobs. *Removing the geo from the sim got rid of this, but presented other problems. *One workaround has been to modify the geos with “holes” to allow particles to escape.
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