Some problems getting foam and point rendering to work with particle flow

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Glad we have a clue on it now! However, the log is still from version 24510, which is the official build, and not a nightly from nightlies.chaosgroup.com.

Is that the Phoenix 2.2 for max 2016 version I've sent you over the email? If so, we'll consider putting the fix from the nightlies into that build and make a new install too.

[Deflaminis]

That is weird. I did start the process with the link you emailed me, and installed the nightly version last week to continue as directed. (I had thought the emailed version was also nightly, so that explains my mistake on previous pages. That's on me.)

I have a screenshot here. Looks like when I installed the nightlies again three days ago that it did create a file at C:/PhoenixFD, but when saving the log information, it saves to E:. You can see that because the C: version was created on the 20th, but it's saving over the E: version on the 23rd as I did my testing. Usually I install all my applications to my D:, but on the 20th I installed PFD onto C: because I thought it would help somehow.



Any links to F; and H; are backups and you can ignore them. But C: and E: are not.

You will also see one on C:/Users/Dennis where I tested to see if my login was corrupted and tried it on another users login. When I installed to D:, it made the log in my documents drive which was E:. When I installed to C:, it made the log on C:/Phoenix, but saves to the E: left over from before. At least, that's how it looks to me on this screenshot.

Here's the saved log on C, that is only a few days old. I still don't know why it's updating the E: version though... but thanks a lot for helping me get this working.phoenix_maxver18.zip

Maybe my index is corrupted? Maybe it's causing problems because I"ve moved my default "Documents" location to E: instead of the default location, whereas the Dennis login still uses C:/documents default?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Strange stuff indeed, Ivaylo must say more about the location of the log.

[Ivaylo Katev]

i suppose E is mapped to correspond to ...Dennis\Documents folder, the official release writes the log to the Documents/PhoenixFD folder
my suggestion is to use the same trick that worked for the the installation mystery, delete all these log files, and use the one that will appear after the new start

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Btw, do you happen to have Phoenix for Maya on that machine too?

Nah, I take that back.

[Deflaminis]

Nope. Only true weirdness is my user login has a differently mapped Documents folder than all other users.

No maya.

Thanks so much for all your help, I appreciate it greatly.

Any idea why the VolumeGrid doesn't get added after I reload the save? Do I need it?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

The volume grid atmosphere? It will be needed only in case you have a volume grid in the scene - basically it should get created automatically when the volume grid is loaded, because it's needed to render it. On the other hand, the Phoenix atmosphere is needed to render phoenix grids and the phxfoam object, and it also should be created automatically by phoenix when phoenix objects are present. However, it's still a mystery why the volume grid atmosphere is causing a crash with the phxfoam..

[Deflaminis]

Wonder why it's being added at rendertime... does the foam need it for point rendering? (is that considered volumetric?)

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey, sorry for the late answer - the PHXFoam works through the atmospheric pipeline due to some internal peculiarities and also due to legacy. It will be changed over time though.

Also, more importantly - the crash should be fixed with a V-Ray nightly from the last couple of days. If you have some spare time, could you confirm it's okay, or that we've fixed something else?

[ecraft_CML]

I was running into this and it appears you need to not use an existing scene. Try using the 10/20 build and opening a scene still errors like AJ was seeing. Recreating the scene in a new scene referencing the same output as the input in the new scene renders without error.

Is there a reason this issue carries through on existing scenes? Is there a way to reset the scene to prevent it from happening with having to recreate the scenes?

Thanks,
-Eric

[ecraft_CML]

Okay it looks like the issue may be related to saving and loading files. Everything rendered fine earlier, but was asked to come back to the scene and make some adjustments and I am getting the UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: Broadcasting NOTIFY_POST_RENDERFRAME error.

-Eric

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Does the workaround of AJ work for you too? Do you actually have a volume grid atmosphere in your atmospherics list? The fix is in a more recent V-Ray nightly - doesn't matter which Phoenix nightly you get. If you don't have access to V-Ray nightlies, you'll have to use the workaround with deleting the volume grid atmos, immediately saving and closing max and then it should be fine.

[ecraft_CML]

The file is being a little weird as this morning I am not getting the issue and the Volume Grid isn't present so I may have done the delete and immediately save yesterday before closing out the file. Not sure exactly what I did, but thank you for the help.

-Eric