Official release

Date – Sept. 15, 2016

 

New Features

PhoenixFD

  • Implemented simulation and render presets

  • Implemented Phoenix FD Toolbar for 3ds Max with quick simulation Start/Stop controls and quick creation of nodes

  • Added various Quick Setup presets to the Phoenix FD Toolbar for automatic creation of Simulators and Sources around an emitter

  • Support for 3ds Max 2017

  • Splitted the PHXSimulator into separate LiquidSim and FireSmokeSim objects

  • New Simulation licenses to be run without GUI in Backburner/Deadline/3dsmaxcmd mode

Simulation

  • FLIP Liquid solver

  • New vorticity confinement algorithm that adds high detail and improves the rolling of smoke and fire

  • PCG conservation that improves the behavior of smoke and fire

  • Follow Path force

  • Body Attraction and Morphing forces

  • Wave Force that transfers the effect of the PhoenixFDOceanTex onto the simulation

  • Direct Initial fill up option for objects

  • Re-timing by Time Bend resimulation for fire/smoke

  • Direct re-timing and re-meshing of FLIP liquids

  • Dedicated Mist particles

  • Discharge Modifiers for advanced control of sources

  • Controls for burning fuel depletion and smoke production

  • Allowed per object wetting

  • Simulation interaction with particle shapes

  • Scene scale multiplier per simulator

Rendering

  • Implemented Foam Shader particle count multiplier

  • Render option to control the strength of volumetric shadows

  • Added shadow strength and point size options to the point shader

  • Added a separate control for the step of shadow rays

  • Ability to pop out and enlarge curves and color gradients

  • Support for matte objects

  • Added a displacement mode suitable for rendertime advection

  • Added a gamma correction control for Phoenix simulators only

  • Implemented a Procedural Foam Texture for the ocean surface

  • Support for the PRTReader in V-Ray RT

  • Enabled pure Volumetric rendering for V-Ray RT

  • Particle age render element

Preview

  • GPU preview directly in the viewport

  • Support more than one light in the GPU preview

I/O

  • Export particles and meshes with Exocortex Crate from the simulators and the PRTReader

  • Support for 3ds Max's built-in Alembic export

  • Allowed passing custom names for the OpenVDB/Field3D channels

  • Implement 32bit export of the RGB channel to aur caches


Modified Features

PhoenixFD

  • Open the right-click properties on a group of objects simultaneously

  • Changed the viewport representation of the Phoenix objects to wireframe icons

  • Changed the location of the sample scenes to 3ds Max's 'scenes' directory

Simulation

  • Upres and add detail to a sim without changing the shape using the Resimulation

  • Allowed resimulation with both Wavelet and RGB

  • Ability to decrease resolution with resimulation

  • Direct cascade connection between Liquid simulators

  • Push the foam with moving geometry

  • Foam surface lock control

  • Allowed the PHXSource Noise to affect Brush and Inject modes

  • Support for NURBS shape obstacles, which are non-solid by default

  • Multiplier for the "Wind from movement" option

Rendering

  • Optimized fire/smoke rendering in Volumetric mode

  • Optimized the Linear and Spherical samplers

  • Probabilistic volumetric rendering mode for Fire/Smoke and particles

  • Ability to select multiple particle groups in the Foam Shader

  • Foam Shader light cache speedup option

  • Optimized the Foam Shader's Point mode

  • Export the Foam Shader to vrscenes

  • Added a new Fire Opacity Mode in which the fire has its own opacity curve

  • Cutter support in Mesh mode rendering

  • Support for motion blurred render Cutter and Glass geometry

  • Motion blur clipping by the Cutter geometry for non-Mesh modes

  • Allowed gradual transition between the default Black Body Fire model and an artistic model using the 'Physically Based' option

  • Display the channel data range in the curve and color gradient render controls

  • Limited the volumetric render curves between 0 and 1

  • Curve and color gradient markers can be moved across their neighbors

  • Allowed adding and removing or markers of the render curves/gradients by MAXScript

  • Gradient controls now display the colors with gamma correction

  • Using grid-based self-shadowing, create less lights for the scene than for the grid

  • The ocean subdivisions affect the mesh in cap mode too

  • Dome camera support for the ocean surface

  • Implemented velocity based fade out for the ocean displacement

  • Ability to create ocean from Houdini OpenVDB caches

  • Smoothing option for the input cache that can be used to remove grid artifacts

  • Improved and optimized the motion blur for volumetrics

  • V-Ray RT GPU animation rendering of PhoenixFD meshes

  • Added option to export Phoenix as a VRayVolumeGrid in vrscenes

  • The Fire emissive lights produce specular lighting

  • Display warnings if using motion blur without particle velocity or PA size multiplier without Age

  • Added more info to particle blending errors

Preview

  • Automatic preview detail reduction

  • Automatic channel ranges for the viewport grid preview

  • Create default lights for the GPU preview if there are none

  • Show the RGB channel in the GPU preview

  • Improve the velocity voxel preview

  • Preview particles colored by the velocity

  • Allowed changing of the mesh preview color

  • Create low res viewport mesh preview in ocean mode

  • Channel data interval information in the cache info

  • Cache info describing which version of PhoenixFD was used during simulation

  • Display the fully resolved input/output/resim paths with frame numbers

  • Display a status text in the viewport while a simulation is running

  • Show the actual grid bounding box even if the cache content is not loaded

I/O

  • Included the number format and file extension in input and output paths

  • *.aur caches use a four-digit zero-padded number for proper file sorting

  • Gathered the path controls in a single popup menu

  • Embedded render presets for imported cache files - Houdini, FumeFX and Maya Fluids presets added

  • Loading of Thinkbox Stoke OpenVDB/Field3D cache files

  • Updated the OpenVDB library to version 3.0

  • Support for nameless OpenVDB channels

  • PRTReader loads the particle orientation

  • Display particle groups in the PRT export dialog regardless of the current frame

  • Retry and display a message if a simulation cache is not written properly

PhoenixFDGridTex

  • Rework the selector on the Phoenix texture to prevent circular reference error

  • Added a scalar Speed channel

PhoenixFDParticleTex

  • Added an option to disable the Particle Texture when not rendering

AuraSDK

  • Samples to read and visualize a cache file

Deprecated Features

PhoenixFD

  • Dropped support for Windows XP

Simulation

  • Deprecated the Slow Moving advection

Rendering

  • Dropped the legacy Fire emissive light placing modes


Bug Fixes

PhoenixFD

  • The Phoenix texmaps were in the General instead of the PhoenixFD category

  • Crash after selecting the Simulator in the Foam Shader and undo-ing

  • Right-click Phoenix menu items may not appear in 3ds Max 2016 or newer

  • Atmosphere is created even if no Phoenix objects exist in the scene

  • Installation doesn't restart the license server and sometimes fails to remove old servers

  • Crash on browsing when the previous path was set to a password protected server

  • Crash when doing File->Reset on a paused simulator

  • Merging scenes with Phoenix objects does not work properly

  • Crash when deleting an X-Ref-ed scene

Simulation

  • Non-solid objects emitting particles did not export particle ID and Age channels

  • The Patterns Strength parameter throws foam particles high in the air

  • The 3ds Max Vortex force produces different results on each run

  • Wrong texture mapping of source discharge and channels with volume brush and inject

  • Crash when using a texture map with noise as discharge map

  • Rotating simulator with adaptive grid produces wrong forces

  • The simulation sometimes halts at a random frame

  • Deadlock when two 3ds Max instances simulate simultaneously

  • Wrong position of the particles when resimulating with increased grid resolution

  • Foam and splash can be born through jammed walls or frozen obstacles with PHXSimulator

  • Crash when the cell size is set to zero

  • Crash with simulation of large wrapped grids

  • Sometimes when a new simulation is started, the gravity has wrong direction and magnitude

  • The per-object velocity multiplier overrides the source's velocity value, instead of scaling it

  • Different behavior between the positive and the negative open walls of the simulator

  • Diagonal spike artifacts with Multi-Pass advection at low speed or high SPF

  • Burning depletes Fuel faster proportionally to the Steps per frame

  • Leaks from geometry container when the wall is less than two cells wide

  • VRayDistanceTex does not update with moving geometry

  • Crash with geometry from the Power Translator plugin

  • Meshes created from spline with extrude modifier are not taken into account by the simulation

  • Path Deform animations don't react with the simulator

  • Animated scale of rigid bodies is not accounted for in velocity calculations

  • The grid fit camera algorithm sometimes allows the simulator to shrink too much

  • The adaptive grid expands through walls entirely blocked by frozen objects

  • Adaptive grid can super-expand to unreasonable size in case of a short burst of high velocity

  • When an adaptive limit is reached, the grid refuses to expand at all instead of expanding up to the limit

  • Crash when adaptive grid memory allocation fails

  • Adaptive grid can't expand over 2.1 billion voxels

  • Hang when additional output channels are selected during adaptive grid simulation with preallocation

  • Adaptive grid with jammed walls creates velocity at the walls in fire/smoke mode

  • Occasional jittering with wavelet turbulence and adaptive grid

  • Wrong bounding box with adaptive grid and "No Smaller than Initial Grid" off

  • Crash when simulating with Wavelet and Forward Transfer

  • Crash with grid-only resimulation including drag particles with timeout

  • A hidden PHXSource continues to emit

  • The cascade connection produces gaps when the source is moving

  • The Estimated Time Left reported after simulation restore is wrong

Rendering

  • Fixed various issues where the Ocean Surface does not fit the rendering or preview

  • Ocean gets clipped both in the render and viewport if pixel aspect is set to a value lower than 1.0

  • Can't build ocean when the Invert Volume option is on

  • Cap mode with Invert Volume on renders as infinite surface

  • Wrong normals on the ocean stitching strip at certain camera angles

  • Meshing artifacts at the sim border when the ocean level is higher than the simulator

  • Broken ocean displacement when the camera is oriented exactly vertically

  • Wrong ocean meshing at low camera height

  • Ocean mesh is not visible on some frames

  • In Mesh render mode, the surface displacement works as if there is an ocean

  • Crash on render with enabled displacement but without a map

  • Imported ocean caches from Houdini can mesh with holes at the bottom

  • An additional colored mesh may show during rendering in mesh mode

  • The mesh is still rendered even if not renderable or hidden

  • The foam displacement does not match the liquid displacement

  • Foam Shader ignored the "Invert Cutter" option

  • Foam Shader caustics did not work if GI visibility is off

  • Local and distributed foam render buckets differ with Foam Shader size variation

  • Fixed multiple issues where random colored bubbles would appear during distributed rendering

  • Bubble mode with displacement produces white areas on the foam

  • Foam Shader pressure variation causes flickering in animation

  • Foam Shader did not read properly the Size and Age channels from Thinkbox Krakatoa's PRTLoader

  • No Motion Blur with Foam Shader rendering PRTReader particles from Phoenix FD

  • Foam sliding on inclined geometry is hidden by it during the rendering

  • The point shader produces different opacity when the image resolution is changed

  • The point shader produces very different renders in ortho

  • Container in Volumetric Geometry mode is not shaded in Multi Matte Element

  • Volumetric Heat Haze rendering mode does not render correctly

  • Frame blending does not work properly with adaptive grid

  • Loop playback of an adaptive grid cuts out portions of the grid

  • Inverted render Cutter cuts all the emissive lights outside it, instead of inside it

  • Wrong shading if emissive/diffuse/transparency source is set to 'texture' without actually providing one

  • Crash when rendering in mesh mode a simulator that was used as a cascade source for a fire/smoke simulator

  • Different buckets in distributed rendering mode with light cache

  • Can't exclude a Phoenix atmospheric from a V-Ray or 3ds Max light

  • The lighting render elements do not include the grid self-illumination with LC off

  • Black grid self-illumination with disabled scattering and very thick smoke

  • No grid self-illumination in geometry mode without light cache

  • The emissive lights construction is not thread safe

  • Emissive lights preprocess runs even when the atmosphere is disabled

  • Crash with emissive lights enabled and V-Ray's Hidden Lights option disabled

  • Crash while rendering with V-Ray RT if the additional lights are decreased

  • Crash when loading a cache while V-Ray RT is running

  • Motion blur remains the same length when varying the FPS in V-Ray RT

  • Rendering with motion blur and duration=0 will preprocess forever

  • Volumetric mode ignores the V-Ray object properties motion blur override samples

  • Simulator moving with camera renders with motion blur as if static

  • Moving simulator has no motion blur in Volumetric mode and clipped motion blur in Volumetric Geometry mode

  • Simulator does not render with motion blur, velocity channel, "play speed" set to 0 and "wind from movement" option turned on

  • Artifacts on the wall of the simulator when rendering liquids in "Isosurface" mode.

  • Noise on flat iso-surfaces created from textures

  • Fix preview and mesh mode for the Surface Texture

  • Fog correction produces improper blending with semi-transparent geometry

  • Reflected geometry misses Fire lighting in some buckets

  • Wrong rendering with V-Ray 3.0, geometry mode and other geometry inside the simulator

  • Crash when rendering with Defscanline with foam tint enabled

  • Crash with V-Ray Toon, VRayNormals and Volumetric Geometry

Preview

  • The preview of OpenVDB caches doesn't always update when changing frames

  • The cell preview stops drawing after V-Ray RT is used

  • New versions of 3ds Max hang when the GPU preview runs out of memory

  • Mesh preview crashes on 3ds Max 2016 and newer with Nitrous DX9

  • Crash on enabling mesh preview with a non-existant surface channel

  • Negative frames with mesh preview enabled change the preview time

  • Cell preview does not update when changing 'Load Nearest if Missing'

  • Crash when enabling Shaded with Maps in the viewport for a scene with ocean tex and foam tex

I/O

  • Thinkbox Krakatoa always rendered the same frame for Phoenix particles in animation

  • Unable to pick Simulator/PRTReader via Thinkbox Stoke as Velocity sources

  • Thinkbox Frost isn't working with cache where not all particle types are exported

  • Cannot export a sequence via Thinkbox XMesh

  • Cannot export PRT files to a UNC network location

  • PRT files from Phoenix cannot be loaded via Thinkbox Krakatoa's PFlow birth

  • Crash when exporting PRT when manually setting the range past the cache range

  • PRTReader does not return the particle ages

  • Wrong winding of the faces of a meshed Field3D cache

  • OpenVDB levelset caches render with inverted normals and winding

  • Can't blend between imported OpenVDB or Field3D files

  • The container jitters or has incorrect position with OpenVDB caches from FumeFX

  • The Speed channel is not working when rendering a Field3D/OpenVDB cache

  • Imported OpenVDB files have wrong orientation in V-Ray RT

  • Field3D files from FumeFX using boundless sim or wavelet are not scaled correctly

  • Field3D caches over 4GB cannot be loaded

  • Aur cache files over 2GB cannot be loaded

  • Too many simulated particles break the export compressor and cause a crash on read

  • Cannot use UNICODE cache paths

  • Can't load negative frame numbers

  • Phoenix frames folder is created for each new 3ds Max scene saved

PhoenixFDGridTex

  • Crash at the moment a PhoenixFDGridTex is assigned as an input to a composite map

Turbulence

  • Crash when creating a Turbulence helper and dragging its size to zero

 

 

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