Tyre burnout sim- urgent help needed

Phoenix Issues
1

Hi,

I haven’t used phoenix FD for a while and am trying to use it on a project for a quick, basic, tyre burn smoke effect.

I’m following a max tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM46wtfPynk) but i’m using phoenix fd for maya (3.1)
The effect is a close up of the wheel with the tyre spinning very fast and the smoke spinning around with the wheel. I have a smoke emitter cube with the smoke set to volume inject and then another source (spinning cylinder) with the wheel rotating using ‘motion velocity’ ticked. However i am facing two main problems:

1. I want to run the sim, then adjust, then run it again. Every time i start again it runs the same sim. If i hit delete- IT DOES NOT DELETE! The sim just jumps to the first frame of the last sim. This is soooo annoying. How do i stop this? Ideally i don’t want to cache at all, i just want a fresh sim every time i start from the beginning, like with maya ncloth etc.
2. The motion velocity source doesn’t seem to be effecting anything at all. How do i check if it’s actually having an effect on the sim? I want the rotating tyre to spin the smoke around, i have a spinning wheel with motion velocity set to 1 and it doesn’t seem to have an effect.
3. If i change the scene scale between metres, centimetres etc this seems to have no effect whatsoever also. Is there a reason why this is? Maybe it’s because i’m still running the old sim, I can’t tell because I CANT DELETE IT!

sorry for the CAPS folks, you can see I’m on a deadline!

Thanks in advance for any advice!

2

Update: Looking much better now! Adjusting the settings for dissipation, cell size and density vastly improved things. Plus motion velocity increased a lot seemed to really help. Panic over! But i do find the sim deleting very annoying. Every time i run the sim i have to click on the the sim object, hit stop, hit stop again, then hit delete, then stop again to make sure it;'s deleted. Is there an easier way of working?

3

Another thing I’m finding is the viewport preview disappears if you get too close to the bounding box of the simulator. Is there a way around this?

4

Hey, what you describe about deleting should.not be working like this at all. Does the same happen with a brand new scene as well, or is it specific just to the scene you’re working with? Can you record a video of how you make this happen?

Also, are you sure you are using the latest Phoenix 4.30? The viewport thing you describe was fixed a few versions back, so now the camera can go into the gpu preview.

Jesse’s tutorial is based on one of our free example scenes, which you can find here of you need a working setup to compare with: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/pages/vi…ageId=47532064

Cheers!

5

Wow thanks Svetlin. V useful. Perhaps i should upgrade and see if that fixes anything. But now my license has died! It says ‘there are no available license of this type on the chaos group license server’
It was working fine yesterday. I purchased through blue gfx
Aaaargh!

6

Phew. Now the license works. I have a feeling i really need to upgrade. I have a dongle license. If i check http://localhost:30304 the license shows up but on the chaos group site the dongle is not there. What do i do to upgrade the dongle to 4.3? Or if not is there a higher version than 3.10.00? I’m not sure i’m ready for an online license- these things always happen to me on a sunday!

Thanks

7

I have just found version 31400 on the chaos group site. I have downloaded the maya 2019 version but there is no installer?
Just various folders. Do i have to copy and paste these all individually into new folders in the maya 2019 directories? Would really help if there was an installation app.

8

The 2018 version seems to be working (installs from an exe) but it would be nice to have it in Maya 2019. I will try to see if this fixes the various issues.

9

I now have it set up in maya 2019 (The only way i could do it was to install a vray next trial license). I think it solved the sim delete issue. However the gpu preview issue is still there. Most of the shot is fine but there is an annoying glitch occasionally on random frames like a clipping plane issue. Is there any workaround for this?
I really need it to work for client previews.

10

Sorry forgot to mention, the camera is not intersecting the box, in fact it is quite far away from the sim grid

11

If i move the camera around the scene, i get weird artifact lines every so- often on the smoke, if i go too close to it.

12

Are the lines fixed in 4.3? I am using 3.14 and they are definitely still there. Can I upgrade from 3.14 to 4.3? I don’t need vray just Pheonix for Maya upgrade. The upgrade i not available on the chaos site. However i don’t want to upgrade if the lines are still there on the gpu previews.

13

Just installed the 4.3 trial. There are still lines across the smoke on 4.3. When you move the camera close to the smoke there are artifacts on the gpu preview. I need the GPU preview to work for the project I’m working on.
Sorry for all the posts on a sunday but I desperately need this to work :frowning:

14

Hey,

I see you are trying a lot of things, and you don’t always mention what you did after you had an issue, so let me drop in on some of the things I recognize:

1. If your license is not working:
- Check here in case it’s a known issue in the licensing: https://status.chaos.com/
-Make sure you are using the LATEST Chaos license server: Download | My Chaos

2. Phoenix 4 is a new MAJOR version, after Phoenix 3. As with all Chaos products, going from Phoenix 3 to Phoenix 4 is a paid upgrade. All dot updates are free, e.g. going from Phoenix 3.11 to 3.12, 3.14, etc., or from 4.0 to 4.20 or the latest 4.30.

3. There are 3 types of Chaos licenses - perpetual, annual or monthly; If you have a perpetual license, the upgrade from 3 to 4 is discounted. If you wanna use annual or monthly, they don’t require an upgrade - you just get access to all versions and you can use whichever you want, including 3 and 4. On the Chaos website, here are the prices: Chaos Phoenix - Liquid, Fire & Smoke Simulation Software | Chaos

4. Maybe you downloaded a ZIP installer - this is intended for studios who just replace their plugins. Make sure to download the installer that does not have (ZIP) in its name:

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4. If the lines you see are still there in 4.30, then it’s still something that we need to fix. I will note this just in case - what you see in the viewport is the GPU preview - it has nothing to do with rendering so your rendered image will not have such lines. It will be best if we can fix it anyway, but I need some specific info, so please at least give me a screenshot of how it looks or we are just shooting in the dark here.

5. Do you still get the issue where you were deleting the caches? A wild guess could be that something is wrong with the Input or Output rollout paths, so make sure to reset them to defaults from the ‘…’ menu to the right. If this does not help, please mention if a new scene has the same issue and did not provide the scene or the steps or video, so if possible, please share any of these so I would be able to understand what’s going on.

Cheers!

15

I’m afraid this is why i don’t want to purchase an online license. I downloaded the trial version and already it has stopped working. It tells me: -200 The chaos group license server could not be reached. no gui license found.

16

Hey, are you sure you are not getting the upgrade option on the site? From my account I can see this here: Chaos Phoenix - Liquid, Fire & Smoke Simulation Software | Chaos

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But if you’re already bought from a reseller, could be best to get in touch with them. I just want to make sure there isn’t some issue on the Chaos site.

Indeed this might be the reason for the deleting caches issues, yes - if the sim is running, it might take a while for the hard disk to delete the caches and meanwhile the sim could write one more (off the top of my head it should not be possible to write more than one, but gotta see if I can break it here now that I know the steps…). Deleting the caches while the sim is not selected has already been brought up and it’s so easy to implement that it’s a shame if I delay this any longer. Will ping you when it’s in the nightlies…

These lines! We’ve seen them in some rare random occasions, but only while you are moving the camera around. If the key is to have heavier caches with no Detail Reduction, will try to break it here and catch the issue. Indeed it looks like z-fighting, but we’ve also come to the conclusion that this can’t be the case because there aren’t any other geometries around. Gonna need just one confirmation - are the images you posted screenshots from the viewport, or produced by maya’s playblast, or images saved by the Save Frame/Animation Preview buttons at the bottom of the Preview → GPU Shade Preview rollout? While we’re trying to catch this, would you be able to work around it by using the e.g. Save Preview buttons if you were using playblast before?

17

The images i sent are grabs from the viewport. But I will try the other options, however whilst playing back they seem to appear consistently in the same place, so i had assumed they would be on the playblasts too.
If you explode some smoke outwards horizontally, then try to view the explosion moving from above, like a drone shot for example, this is when it is most exaggerated.
Basically i’m trying to get the nicest looking sim in the viewport possible. The issue definitely seems related to the camera clipping planes to me.
As for the upgrade that’s strange, i didn’t have that option, will look again.
Thanks again for your help.

18

I’ve just tried the GPU preview option…Hadn’t realised it uses a different method to the playblast. It solves my problem! No lines anymore. (However it does seem to have a slightly different look to the viewport).
Anyway - it’s an extremely useful feature, especially as you can render while you sim. So thanks a million for the suggestion.
My playblasts definitely can’t travel too close to the sims though. The artifacts begin and ultimately the sim disappears when you get to a certain distance away. I’ve tried all the viewport transparency algorithms and its the same on all.

19

Agh, so I implemented deleting of caches without a selected simulator for 3ds Max, only to start doing that for Maya and find out that we already had it!

You just gotta right-click the Delete shelf button. I will still make some changes and make it work with left button click as well.

Cheers!

20

Great thanks, worth knowing. surprisingly slows things down quite a bit when you are searching the scene for the sim to delete it.