Phoenix FD for Maya beta 5

[ivaylo.ivanov]

After almost a month, beta 5 is ready. As always you can download it from here: http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/downl...=phoenix2-maya

It's mainly a bug-fix release. It presents also some minor changes to the UI and have two new options to improve the speed when maya fields are used. These options are in the Scene Interaction rollout under "Fields Calculation". The idea is to reduce the number of times PhoenixFD evaluates the fields. It can be somewhat tricky though to determine how often you really need to evaluate the fields. If the fields do not change their intensity during the simulation (and the simulator do not move), they even can be calculated only once at the start of the simulation. Multi-threaded option was also added, but it's not fully supported. Fields that use external objects like curves, will most likely crash if this option is turned on. However most of the fields will work with it.

Another new feature is that particle sources can now use textures for their discharge parameters (as the normal geometry). This allows per particle variation, for example emitting per particle color.

Here is the full change log:

[bug] PhoenixFD texture do not work with the alpha channel when using simple smoke
[bug] Crash in batch mode on Linux
[bug] Random crash at the end of the simulation on Linux
[bug] Crash with failed memory allocation during simulation initialization
[bug] UVW channel in 2d/3d uvw mode can't be used with the standard textures
[bug] PhoenixFD Force Field have no influence until "Ignore Time Scale" is checked
[bug] PhoenixFD Field locks Maya if the simulator do not have velocity channel
[bug] Wrong GI calculation
[bug] Foam shader do not apply the world transformation of the standard particle systems
[bug] Incorrect velocity render element with foam
[modified feature] Light cache - control for lighting subdivisions
[modified feature] Per frame calculation of the fields
[modified feature] Multi-threaded calculation of the fields
[modified feature] Ability to animate the input frame index
[new feature] Support for textures (including Particle Sampler) with particle sources
[feature request] Option to automatically save the scene before simulating

[Paul Oblomov]

[bug] Crash with failed memory allocation during simulation initialization -=- so now I can try to resim my scene?

BTW - there's some bugs with buffered. I'm working on migrating max scene to maya.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The initial initialization will write you an error if it can't allocate enough memory, not just crash Maya like before. However this is a hint for you, that you must increase your virtual memory or decrease the memory usage.

[Paul Oblomov]

Hm. pagefile ? How is that important for phx ? It's limited to 512mb on my machine.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Well, this is the reason for the crashes . Even if it seems that you have enough memory, programs may not be able to allocate big continues chunks of it. If you really want to limit the virtual memory, it's better to choose some more reasonable amount, like a couple of gigs.

[Paul Oblomov]

Using ssd for a system drive, so, there's no need for a huge pagefile. But I set pagefile on other drive to system managed And its more stable now.... who would have thought of that

[vlado]

Using ssd for a system drive, so, there's no need for a huge pagefile.

Ehh, what does ssd have to do with the page file size? If the page file gets full, Windows will refuse memory requests from applications. It is usually recommended to set the max. page file size to at least twice the amount of physical RAM.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Paul Oblomov]

SSD doesn't like to read-write like crazy, so everybody recommends to create small fixed pagefile on ssd, to extend the ssd life.

[vlado]

SSD doesn't like to read-write like crazy, so everybody recommends to create small fixed pagefile on ssd, to extend the ssd life.

<shrug> Then it's one of them choices things... if you limit the page file, then you limit the amount of RAM that applications can allocate.

Best regards,
Vlado