Patch release
Date – Nov. 14, 2017
New Features
Simulation
- Resimulation over OpenVDB caches exported from Phoenix FD
- Restoring simulation from OpenVDB caches exported from Phoenix FD
- Load the simulation initial state from OpenVDB or Field3D
- Option to control the randomness in velocity direction at Splash birth
- Option to allow only expansion of the adaptive grid, but disable shrinking
Rendering
Added a new frame blending method using both Velocity and Advection Origin, producing smoother fire/smoke retiming
- Stronger Approximate Scattering for brighter regions and lower scattering for the darker regions of the same volume
Preview
Viewport preview for visualizing the influence of both native and Phoenix forces
Particle Shader
Size Addend option
- Option to allow offsetting the particles vertically
Curve Controls
Ability to horizontally or vertically stretch and flip the selection in curve and gradient controls
Path Follow
Added an option to break the spline into segments which influence the simulator simultaneously
- Support for 3ds Max modifiers on splines
Tools
Added a command line cache_converter tool, allowing conversion of already existing AUR cache sequences to OpenVDB without simulating again
SDK
Added a new interface for sampling volumetrics at render time
Modified Features
Simulation
- Moved the Scene Scale option in the Grid rollout and now it affects the container dimensions text
- Change adaptive limit defaults to non-zero
- Display an error if the FLIP resimulation cannot find Liquid particles
Rendering
Use particle ID instead of Age channel when looping particles
- Expose the Isosurface Level parameter in the Liquid simulator
- Sped up Ocean construction
Source
- Display Outgoing Velocity of sources in Surface Force mode as units/second
SDK
- Equalized the public interface classes between 3ds Max and Maya. Added new ones serving specific purposes - simulation, volumetric shading, frame data access, etc.
Removed Features
SDK
- Dropped the IPhoenixFD interface
Bug Fixes
Simulation
Crash when simulating using any Phoenix textures in 3ds Max 2018 Update 2 and Update 3
- The General-Purpose Time Bend Resimulation was not working correctly in Phoenix FD 3.04
- Restoring Resimulation was not working in Phoenix FD 3.04
- Resimulation might produce less smoke and temperature
- Liquid particles penetrate the walls of complex or thin static geometry
- After loading a cache or simulating, CPU usage remains high on machines with many threads
- Overlapping Solid Fire/Smoke emitters in Surface Force mode emit inside each other's volumes
- Instability with high incoming velocities through the grid walls
- Fire/Smoke simulations using Solid emitters in Surface Force mode with Noise produce different results on each run
- Fire/Smoke simulations using Solid emitters and Buffered or PCG Conservation produce different results on each run
- Non-solid sources in Surface Force mode do not affect Liquid simulations
- Foam born from Sources in Surface Force mode does not respect the simulator Foam Size and Variation settings
- When splashes split, they form visible lines of particles
- Big difference between Splash behavior with Liquid-Like at 0 and at 0.001
- Increasing the Splash Threshold never eliminates all born splashes
- Foam Rise and Falling speed set to 0 do not freeze foam particles
- Submerged foam particles ascend high into the air near negative open simulator walls
- The Simulate Air Effects option may create huge velocities at voxels where the liquid contacts geometry
- Rigged non-solid bodies cannot contribute motion velocity to the simulation
- Random hang when restoring the simulation with more than 1 Steps Per Frame
- Crash when a particle system with instanced geometries used as obstacles exits the simulator
- Adaptive Grid's Extra Margin for Liquid simulators does not work
- Grid artifacts with Liquid simulation using Confine Geometry with curved surfaces
- Liquid particles get created on the back end of a moving liquid simulator with Initial Fillup, raising the liquid level
- Overlapping a Solid Surface Force source with a non-solid body with Clear Inside does not clear the smoke
Rendering
Artifacts when rendering overlapping containers in Volumetric Geometry mode
- Flickering when rendering Smoke Color based on a gradient with varying data range with Approximate Scattering
- Using a Grid Texture as a render input for the same simulator causes double Self-Illumination calculations
- Crash when blending caches with Drag particles
- Random crash when blending between frames which contain very few particles
- Subdivided Ocean surface may abruptly change its detail with animated camera
- Using Liquid Particles for Mesh Smoothing together with Cutter Geometry still uses particles outside the Cutter
- Using Liquid Particles for Mesh Smoothing does not take effect until the Smoothness is raised to 3
- Cannot key the Playback Mode parameter during sequence render
- Fix dark and non-uniform horizon using the Horizon Roughness option
Particle Shader
- Particle Shader Motion Blur length changes between the first frame and the rest of the sequence
- Shutter speed does not affect particle motion blur
- Bucket artifacts when rendering dense bubbles with the Particle Shader's light cache enabled
Preview
- The steps per frame count displayed during simulation is wrong in some cases
- Particle channels in the Cache File Content list are wrong when using Loop with Overlap
I/O
Error about not enough memory to save the cache when a particle channel is over 2GB
Source
Disabling the Emit Liquid source option does not stop liquid discharge in Volume Inject mode
- Mapped source discharge by a texture does not clamp the texture input between 0 and 1
- Discharge Modifier based on normals in object space use them in wrong scale
- Discharge Modifier by World Speed does not work correctly with simulator attached to moving emitter
- Crash when deleting an emitter from the scene, adding another one to the source and changing the emit mode to Brush
Plain Force
- Plain Force with drag strength of 1 is not able to stop the fluid's motion
Body Force
Body Force does not affect parts of the grid that expanded using Adaptive Grid
Path Follow
- The Fade Start parameter was not working in Phoenix FD 3.04
- Artifacts when simulating using a FollowPath force on a circular spline
Mapper
The Mapper cannot completely freeze or exactly set velocity in the simulation
Phoenix FD Grid Texture
- Can't render a fire/smoke simulator using PhoenixFDGridTex from another simulator as Fire and Smoke inputs
- Grid Texture which is not plugged into a material does not update its simulator name when it's renamed
Phoenix FD
- Each time 3ds Max 2018 is started the Phoenix FD toolbar reappears, even if hidden
- Node properties saved using a decimal comma are not read properly using a dot and vice versa
- Copying a simulator with default cache paths loses the Input paths for both the original and copied simulators
- No confirmation box when overwriting presets