Hello all. First time posting to the forum. I apologize if this topic is in the wrong channel or has already been addressed (I can’t see to find a Search feature in the forums to find out).
When submitting a simple 3dsmax/Vray Phoenix water scene to Chaos Cloud or Backburner, the Particle Shaders (for foam/splash) are not rendering. Yet rendering locally, it’s fine.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks!
Steve
Make sure they are not part of a MultiMatte Element. There is a bug related to that, at least with Standalone (or Cloud). However, Chaos will not publish a public list of bugs so nobody knows about such things.
Oh, and do two other things… Try the latest nightlies of both VRay and Phoenix, and ask in The Phoenix forum, as they are fast to respond, and fast to fix bugs.
Ummm, the multimatte issue is fixed, no?
In the nightlies site we have a changelog with all the fixes and new features in the nightlies that is accessible to everyone: Chaos
Also there are public changelogs for all the official builds, so anyone can check if issues they had were already fixed: Phoenix for 3ds Max
Unfortunately maintaining a public issue database where no secrets are given away including partner or client info, everything is formulated well and can be understood by anyone is a full time job, so unfortunately the day won’t be enough for me to do that as well. It’s very unlikely to happen, so I hope the info in the forums and the ability to ask us if there are any issues would suffice for the time being.
We will try to reproduce the particle shader issue, but currently all our tests are passing, so if you could share the exact Phoenix version or share the scene you use for testing, it would be very helpful.
Cheers!
Yes, you fixed it straight away, thank you. I just didn’t know which version fixed it, or if the fix is included in the OPs’ version.
In the nightlies site we have a changelog with all the fixes and new features in the nightlies that is accessible to everyone: https://nightlies.chaos.com/main#/ph…ghtly/20230613
This one is awesome! I wish we had that for the nightlies (and for VRay), but I am sure that would take a lot of resources.
Also there are public changelogs for all the official builds, so anyone can check if issues they had were already fixed: https://docs.chaos.com/display/PHX4M…on+Change+Logs
Unfortunately maintaining a public issue database where no secrets are given away including partner or client info, everything is formulated well and can be understood by anyone is a full time job, so unfortunately the day won’t be enough for me to do that as well. It’s very unlikely to happen, so I hope the info in the forums and the ability to ask us if there are any issues would suffice for the time being.
Sorry if that came across too harsh. I understand a public database is a big pain. Many of us are used to these for open source projects, but, like you point out, confidential info or security info frequently gets leaked this way (as evidenced in a lot of open source projects).
It’s just that it can be tough for a user to keep track of what bugs there are and which ones have been fixed in which version.
Note we have encountered and reported 2 or 3 other bugs related to Multimatte or other Render Elements (Specular was one) when using Standalone (cloud). I don’t think these involve Phoenix, but they do point to a general trend of buginess with render elements when using Standalone. So, right now disabling render elements is the first thing I try when encountering issues with Standalone. All of these bugs are reported, but without a bug tracker I don’t know the actual status.
I don’t know that there is a good solution without expending a lot of resources. The best solution is the one that you take, which is just to fix the bugs so quickly that nobody notices. 
It’s more the VRay bugs that seem to vanish into the private bug database, and don’t always seem to be acknowledged when fixed (in the notes of the VRay nightlies). Perhaps this is my deficiency in finding the notes, but I don’t always find them all acknowledged in the note for the VRay nightlies.
Ah yes, I can totally see how an issue that doesn’t get fixed right away might seem to get lost forever (while it really doesn’t). I believe if a person goes through Support, they will get an issue ID for the issue logged in the task list, which I usually don’t do 'cause I assume if I say we logged the issue, the other person would believe me 
Also, alongside each issue in the database, we keep links to all clients (or colleagues) who requested it, so we would write back to the person when there is a fix or at least some improvement. Unless a lot of time has passed - I think it wouldn’t make sense to write about something 3 or 5 years later. And indeed, there are some differences in the way different teams handle their changelogs, so I guess it’s possible an issue would not appear in the changelog in a way that it would be recognized, or perhaps could go missing completely. One scenario would be something that happens to me from time to time - while doing something in one part of the code, I notice something that is obviously off and fix it, and then move on. This thing could be a bug someone reported, but I might not be able to find something that sounds related in the database, or I might forget to look it up at all, so the issue would get fixed without a proper changelog entry. Eventually someone might decide to clean up the issues in their project and might notice that an issue no longer reproduces and would close it, and if it’s too long since the issue has been opened, might skip notifying the linked parties.
But indeed, in any case, the way to make sure one is informed is to reach out to us. Which at least for me, as a person who never reports anything about any products I use or takes advantage of any warranties, is something I can totally understand why someone would Not want to do :))
