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 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.
UI Text Box
type
tip
The Voxel Tuner is a powerful tool and it will not stop you from creating expressions such as "If the Temperature is higher than 0, increase the temperature by 100". This will infinitely keep raising the temperature throughout the Simulator until the simulation explodes, so you must be careful.
Note that the Voxel Tuner affects all Phoenix Simulators in the scene unless they explicitly exclude it.
UI Text Box
type
warning
Please note that in order to correctly copy/clone a Voxel Tuner in Maya, you must use Edit -> Duplicate Special and check 'Duplicate input graph' and 'Assign unique name to children nodes'.
