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The Voxel Tuner uses custom logic to directly affect the cells of the Phoenix Simulator. It allows you to do very specific tweaks of the simulation which would otherwise be hard to achieve. It goes through all voxels in the grid and changes the values of those voxels that pass the custom condition you create. Example Conditions and Actions would be:

• If the the Speed channel in a voxel is higher than 50, then create Smoke in this voxel.

• If the distance from a voxel to a mesh is less than 5, then reduce the Speed of the fluid in this voxel.

• If the RGB color of the voxel is Red, only then affect the voxel with a Maya Vortex Field.

You can construct simple conditions such as comparing a value from a voxel channel to a number or measuring the distance from a voxel to a mesh, and you can also combine many conditions in a complex expression using 'AND' and 'OR' logic. At each simulation step, the Voxel Tuner will check each voxel against this condition and it will modify the voxel only if the condition passes. For example:

• If a voxel's RGB color is Red AND the fluid Speed in the voxel is less than 10, then reduce the Temperature in this voxel.

This will essentially force the fluid to cool down only if it is emitted from a specific Phoenix Source with its RGB set to red. Fluid emitted from other sources and/or colored differently will not be affected by the action.

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Enabled | enabled – Animatable checkbox that turns on and off the effect of the Voxel Tuner.

When [ Edit Condition... ] – Opens the Edit Condition window. The Edit Condition window is used to construct a sequence of tests which are evaluated for every cell of the Phoenix Simulator, at each simulation Step. If the cell satisfies the condition, the selected Then actions are performed - Change Voxel Channel or Affect By Forces. Otherwise, the cell is ignored. By default, the condition is set to "Temperature > 800", therefore only those cells where the Temperature channel is greater than 800 will be affected by the specified action. See the Grid Channel Ranges page for more information on the channel ranges.

Then:

Change Voxel Channel | tun_act_op_chan – When the condition of the Tuner passes for a voxel, you can choose which grid channel of this voxel will be changed and how:

Channel | act_chan – Selects the Grid Channel to affect. If Speed is selected, the Velocity vector of the simulation will be scaled based on the specified Action Value. The Channel can be one of: [ Temperature ], [ Smoke ], [ Fuel ], [ Speed ], [ Velocity X ], [ Velocity Y ], [ Velocity Z ], [ RGB Red ], [ RGB Green ], [ RGB Blue ].

Action | act_chan_change – Specifies the type of action to perform on the selected Channel. You can choose to increase or decrease the value at each simulation step, or set it directly to a certain value.

Action Value | act_value – Specifies the value for the selected Action.

Buildup Time (sec) | buildup_time – The time it takes (in seconds) for the Channel to gradually reach the specified Action Value. If Buildup Time is 0, the effect is instant.

Affect By Forces | tun_act_op_force, voxTunFSet – When the condition of the Tuner passes for a voxel, you can choose which forces will affect it. You can pick Maya fields, Phoenix forces, Mappers, or even other Voxel or Particle Tuners. Using this, you can for example tell a force to only affect the fluid inside a volume, or only affect fluid with certain speed, or even based on a texture mask.

With Multiplier | tun_force_mult –  Multiplier for the strength of the forces. This is particularly useful for easily scaling the effect of Maya field over a Phoenix simulation.