How do I get Corona Slicer to do the opposite of what it’s doing in my attached screenshot? i.e. keep the inside bit and slice away the outside bit.
I’m trying to replicate the setup here done with Vray Clipper (14 mins) and clip a Phoenix Ocean Mesh to to specific shape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZP1-GUaDvY
i.e. keep the inside bit and slice away the outside bit.
At the moment you cann’t do that.
A solution shoud be to create the slicer geometry “inverse”.
Some times ago i asked for option like: Slice_inside / Slice_outside.
Sigh, another half baked entry to add to the list. It was introduced in V8, seems like a pretty basic feature to have implemented by now. If that one feature existed I could reduce my phoenix sim time by hours/days
Boolean modifier? In recent 3ds Max boolean was reworked to the level that there’s very little excuses not to use it.
I found it incredibly unstable (and slow) when working with heavy geometry. I dread to think what it’s like with a high density phoenix sim but I’ll give it a go. Still would be nice if Corona had a ‘clipper’ that was as fully featured as VRay’s
I’ve come across the same hurdle and did request an inverse clipper. It was ignored, I think.
The only solution I’ve found is to basically inverse the slicer geometry - i.e. shell it bigtime so it’s very thick enveloping the whole sliced geometry.
Unfortunately that won’t work in this situation as i’m trying to clip an infinite ocean. It’s a really neat trick to keep Phoenix sims efficient. The video I linked to explains it really nicely. So I’m having to increase my simulation grid to the entire size of the pool (12m x 6m) and use cap mesh instead of ocean mesh and then clip as you’ve described.
I am not sure what you are up to, but it is worth noting that CoronaSlicer works during render time, so there is no “improvement” from it for the simulation. There should be in-flow/out-flow type volumes in Phoenix (or freeze ) for simulation, if you are up to it.
If you want only a part of a big mesh to be rendered, this is absolutely possible even with slicer - just shell the initial slicer, and then you can modify it the way you want, just make sure that camera is not in the slicer volume.
Hope this helps.
Hey Aram
I tried to explain further up, but not having this feature does directly affect how big my phoenix grid needs to be which in turn affects the simulation time drastically.
As you can see in the video I linked to, the last step is reducing the final grid to just the area of focus, then enabling ‘ocean’ mesh to fill the rest outside of the sim grid, and then clipping the ocean mesh to your desired shape. But we can’t do that because slicer won’t let us. As you’ve said yourself, you’d need to shell and then clip, but how do you create an infinite shell to clip an infinite ocean?
So instead, we have to use ‘Cap Mesh’ instead of ‘Ocean Mesh’. Cap mesh unfortunately doesn’t have the same effect as ocean mesh in terms of filling outside of the sim grid. So I have to make the sim grid slightly bigger than the pool in my instance then clip using the shell method. But this means my sim grid is now wayyyyyy bigger than it would be if I could use ocean mesh.
See attached, you can see my two sim grids in green. If slicer allowed us to clip in the same way as vray clipper, then I could reduce that larger sim grid covering the entire pool to roughly the size of the one i’ve drawn in blue, as i’m only interested in the splash/foam at the base of the waterfall and not the entire 12m long pool
I get it, but shouldn’t it be possible to move the “thickness” plane from shell very far, at least as far to make it unnoticeable?
Don’t get me wrong - I am not justifying the limitation, but what you want to do should very much be possible I think.
Theoretically yes. Practically/Optimally no. Especially when Vray Clipper is a simple checkbox to achieve the exact same thing.
Shouldn’t it be possible to incorporate this option into the slicer material? Inside/Outside checkbox? Do you need me to make an official feature request?
No need for it, it has been already reported 
(Report ID=CMAX-825)
Perfect thanks
Did this functionality ever get added? I’m a bit out of the loop as I’ve not worked on a similar project since.
As far as I know, I don’t think so.
Would be a great feature to have though!
It’s a critical feature to have for anyone doing swimming pool sims that want to do them efficiently
Especially when we’re basically forced to pay for Phoenix now, it would be good if the tools in the host software enabled us to do what the Phoenix tutorials tell us to do.
I am not 100% sure, but I don’t think it is efficient to use an ocean simulation for a pool. The phoenix setup should probably be different and then there would be no need for slicer at all. My suggestion would be to contact the support team at https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/requests/new with your requirements. You would be connected with a Phoenix expert who could help you with the optimal Phoenix setup.
Every single custom shape pool in the videos here from the Phoenix guy require the VRay Clipper https://www.youtube.com/@zdravkopavlov/videos
The key to the ocean mesh is the control over it’s initial fill/height which is needed for a pool
Also the slicer request has stemmed from long discussions with the Phoenix people over on the dedicate Phoenix Chaos Forums.
And for what it’s worth, this functionality is useful for more than just pools.
I finally understand it. Sorry, it took me a while to watch the tutorial and figure out why a slicer is needed. I can confirm that this is properly logged in our internal tracker so it is in higher-ups’ hands.
Meanwhile, you are still welcome to contact our support and there is a chance that one of our Phoenix experts can provide you with a similar solution with no slicers.
A random find: here they are using ocean in “mesh” mode and “cutter geometry” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZE73SnTgR4
