Phoenix FD for Maya beta 3

Hello everybody,

The new beta is on the site. Here is the changelog:

Phoenix FD 2.0 beta 3 (April 6, 2012)
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Crash with PhoenixFD force without a simulator during the simulation
     Simulators with preview turned off not rendered properly during the simulation
     Double emission contribution with additional lights and GI
     Transforms for PhoenixFD nodes must be named accordingly
     Error saving scenes in binary format with Phoenix nodes in Maya 2011 and prior
     Visible seams with wrapped containers
     Intermediate objects interact with the simulation
     Crash with foam simulation in some rare cases
     Instance rendering is not working immediately after duplicating
     Solid mode rendering to work with the RT engine
     Fire/Smoke rendering to work with the RT engine
     Custom gravity vector
     PhoenixFD menu in Dynamics
     Ability to “reset” the simulation (stop/clear cache/revert)
     Auto mapping option for PhoenixFD 3D texture

Phoenix FD 2.0 beta 2 (March 14, 2012)
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Crash when saving a preview in solid geometry mode
     Crash with additional lights and transparency/emission that use a texture
     Emission texture modulation checkbox is not working
     Emission component do not render with the stand-alone and DR
     Crash with Turbulence preview when tweaked while simulation is running
     Crash in animation mode
     Phoenix utility nodes can be selected only when clicked on the wireframe
     Wrong shading color of the Phoenix source in the viewport under VMWare Player
     Crash when closing Maya after rendering a scene with foam
     Support more then one light in the GPU preview
     Boundary conditions must show X/Y/Z related to the Maya viewport, not the simulator core
     DAG processing optimization when the interaction set is inclusive
     Phoenix textures - detect circular references
     Native Python scripting
     Stopping the simulation must revert the frame to the last simulated result
     Support for vray lights with the gpu shading
     Support for flipping Y and Z axis when reading a cache file
     PhoenixFD installation must not change the PYTHONPATH environment variable
     PhoenixFD must delete its shelf when the plugin is unloaded

Here are some known issues:

  • RT is only partially supported in the official versions of V-Ray for Maya. To get the full featured RT support, you need a recent nightly build, but it’s not obligatory. Soon, there will be a stable version of V-Ray for Maya that fully supports Phoenix FD. The known limitations of the current official V-Ray for Maya are:
    - can’t update when the simulator parameters or time is changed (camera changing is working though)
    - works only in geometry mode (this is in Rendering/V-Ray section in AE). Geometry mode for fire/smoke is not recomended for the production render though, unless heat haze must be used.
  • While simulating, DR is working currently at random. If you are experiencing such problems, try pausing the simulation.
  • Some antivirus programs (like Microsoft Security Essentials) that have real time protection may cause the simulation to run a couple of times slower. They seem to check the files generated by Phoenix FD.
  • For simulation it’s better to have a processor with a higher clock speed, then with more cores.

When the multi-byte character is being used for the scene name of Maya, or output path of Phoenix FD, simulation data is not loaded at the time of RT session.

-----vray.exe message----------
warning: Error loading simulation data for time 24
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tests in nightly 22501 + Phoenix FD 2.0 beta 3 (April 6)