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Requires Phoenix FD 3.11.00 Official Release and V-Ray Next Official Release for Maya 2015.

In order to get proper results with Phoenix 4, make sure to use Phoenix 4.41.02 Nightly build from 12 Feb 2022 Build ID 31255 or newer. You can download nightlies from https://nightlies.chaos.com or get the latest official Phoenix and V-Ray from https://download.chaos.com. If you notice a major difference between the results shown here and the behavior of your setup, please reach us using the Support Form.

The instructions on this page guide you through the process of using the Phoenix Particle Texture  to shade a particle simulation with Phoenix in Maya.

The Download button below provides you with an archive containing the scene file.

 

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Units Setup

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Units Setup

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Scale is crucial for the behavior of any simulation. The real-world size of the Simulator in units is important for the simulation dynamics. Large-scale simulations appear to move more slowly, while mid-to-small scale simulations have lots of vigorous movement. When you create your Simulator, you must check the Grid rollout where the real-world

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Scale is crucial for the behavior of any simulation. The real-world size of the Simulator in units is important for the simulation dynamics. Large-scale simulations appear to move more slowly, while mid-to-small scale simulations have lots of vigorous movement. When you create your Simulator, you must check the Grid rollout where the real-world extents of the Simulator are shown. If the size of the Simulator in the scene cannot be changed, you can cheat the solver into working as if the scale is larger or smaller by changing the Scene Scale option in the Grid rollout.

Go to Window -> Settings and Preferences -> Preferences.

On the Settings tab, set the Working Units to centimeter.

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Maya defaults to 24 frames per second.

Note that the Time is set to NTSC (30 fps) in this example.

This is done for the sake of consistency with the 3ds Max version of this tutorial (3ds Max defaults to 30 fps).

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Scene Layout

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Here's how the simulation looks at the moment. The liquid starts falling down and doesn't stick to the animated Torus geometry.

We need to disable the Gravity and add a Body Force that will pull the liquid towards the Torus.

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Phoenix Simulator Setup

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Phoenix Simulator Setup

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Select the Phoenix Simulator and from the Dynamics rollout disable the Gravity checkbox. This way once the liquid is emitted it won't start falling down due to the gravity.

As later we would want to shade our particles based on the liquid channels we need to set those for export to the cache files.

In the Output rollout tick the checkboxes for Velocity and RGB for both the Output Particles and the Output Grid channels.

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Here's the result with the both Body Forces affecting the simulation.

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Particle Shading

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Particle Shading

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Now that we have the scene setup we need to render it out. By default the Phoenix Simulator will be rendered as mesh, though in this case we would like to render out the simulation as particles.

Select the Simulator and from the Rendering rollout disable the checkbox for Enable Rendering.

Create a Phoenix Particle Shader. A new phxParticle_set1 node will appear in the Outliner. This set is used to specify what particles will the Particle Shader be used to render.

Right-mouse-button click in the Outliner and disable the Show DAG Objects Only checkbox.

Middle-mouse-button drag the PG_PhoenixFDSimulator1_Liquid_0 node into the phxParticle_set1 set. This node holds the liquid particles generated by the simulator.

If we hit the render button now you will get something similar.

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Here's how the result looks in motion.

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Particle Shading By Speed

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Here's how the result looks in motion.

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Another really cool thing that you can do with this approach is to combine both methods we have shown above.

So you can take the Particle Texture that reads the RGB channel and multiply it by the Particle Texture that reads the Speed of the Particles.

Duplicate the Particle Texture that we used for the Speed example above, set the Use Color from Particle Channel to RGB and turn off the color remapping.

In order to get a bit different result let's change the Color Remap gradient for the Speed Texture.

Set the Color Intensity to 2.

Set the first point to R: 0.05, G: 0.05, B: 0.05 and move its position to 80. This sets the color to a dark gray and when we later multiply this color by the RGB texture some of the color will get through, but with a lower value.

Set the second point to R: 0.5, G: 0.5, B: 0.5 and move its position to 120.

Create a Multiply/Divide Texture and connect the Speed and RGB particle textures to it.

Then set the Operation to Multiply and set the Multiply/Divide Texture as a Color map for the Particle Shader.

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Let's modify the overall look and make the particles a bit denser.

Select the Particle Shader and set the Point Alpha to 0.11 - this will bring the particles' opacity back up.

Set the Shadow Strength to 5 - this way we'll get stronger and darker shadows.

Now let's add some V-Ray Lights.

Create a V-Ray Sphere Light and position it at X: 287, Y:463, Z:276. Set its Intensity Multiplier to 500.

Create another V-Ray Sphere Light and position it at X: -483, Y:507, Z: -264. Set its Intensity Multiplier to 400.

Set the Radius of both Sphere Lights to 20.

And this is how the final result looks like.

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