This page provides information on the PhoenixFDTexture.
Page Contents
Overview
PhoenixFDTexture can be created from the Hypershade. It loads and exposes a grid channel of a selected Phoenix simulator object as a procedural texture. Using this component, you can shade the content in ways that the plain Phoenix shader does not support.
The main application of this texture is for shading the meshed of liquids which were simulated using an RGB color grid channel. The technique of mixing colored liquids and rendering their colors is available in the Paints Quick Setup preset.
You could also use it as a blending mask, as described in the Milk & Chocolate tutorial for Phoenix FD.
Another use of the PhoenixFDTexture is for rendering via an external volumetric Shader such as the V-Ray Environment Fog. See the External Volumetric Shader section on the Tips and Tricks page for more information.
UI Path: ||Hypershade|| > Create panel > Maya section > 3D Textures
UI Path: ||Create Render Node|| > Maya section > 3D Textures
Parameters
Simulator Node | simNode – Allows you to specify the PhoenixFDSimulator node.
Channel | channel – Specifies the channel retrieved from the Phoenix node:
Rendering Fire Color - Returns the resulting color for the Fire, as specified in the Rendering → Fire tab of the Phoenix FD Simulator.
Rendering Smoke Color - Returns the resulting color for the Smoke, as specified in the Rendering → Smoke tab of the Phoenix FD Simulator.
Rendering Smoke Opacity - Returns the resulting Smoke Opacity, as specified in the Rendering → Smoke Opacity tab of the Phoenix FD Simulator.
Channel Velocity - Returns the contents of the Velocity simulation channel. Velocity Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work.
Channel RGB - Returns the contents of the RGB simulation channel. RGB Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work.
Channel Temperature/Liquid - Returns the contents of the Temperature/Liquid simulation channel. Temper./Liquid Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work.
Channel Smoke - Returns the contents of the Smoke simulation channel. Smoke Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work.
Channel Fuel - Returns the contents of the Fuel simulation channel. Fuel Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work
Channel Speed - Returns the contents of the Speed simulation channel. Speed Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work.
Channel Viscosity - Returns the contents of the Viscosity simulation channel. Viscosity Grid Channel Output has to be enabled on the Phoenix FD Simulator for this to work.
When doing Liquid simulations, Phoenix FD populates the grid Velocity channel only for cells / voxels inside the liquid volume - empty (air) voxels contain no velocity information. To generate velocity information for the empty voxels, enable Simulate Air Effects under the Liquid roll-out of the simulator and re-run the simulation.
Tiling | tiling – Specifies how to handle sampling outside of the simulator box (when Auto Mapping is enabled) or the place3dTexture box otherwise.
Single – The texture will not be tiled and the region outside the box will be empty.
Single Clamped – The texture will not be tiled but its edges will be clamped, thus "stretching" the edge pixels.
Wrap – Tiles the texture by repeating it infinitely.
Mirror – Tiles the texture by flipping it back and forth infinitely.
Sampler Type | samplerType – Determines the blending method between adjacent grid cells.
Box – Displays cells as cubes. There is no blending between neighbor cells. This is the fastest mode.
Linear – Linear blending occurs between neighbor cells to smooth out the fluid's look. Sometimes this mode may unveil the grid-like structure of the fluid. Up to 20-30% faster than the Spherical option.
Spherical – Uses special weight-based sampling for the smoothest looking fluid. With increasing resolution, the visual advantage between this method and the Linear method becomes less noticeable.
Up Vector | upVector – Allows you to manually specify the up vector of the simulator (for example, If it was created in 3ds Max).
Auto Mapping | autoMapping – Allows automatic 3D mapping to the simulator's box, ignoring the place3dTexture node. Note that if the Grid Texture is plugged into a Particle Shader's Color Map slot and Auto Mapping is enabled, Liquid Simulator should also be enabled and connected in the Particle Shader, otherwise the Grid Texture wouldn't know how to get mapped because the Particle Shader has no grid box like the Phoenix Simulator.
Skip Displacement | skipDispl – When enabled, the content is sampled without adding Phoenix displacement.
Alpha is the Color's Intensity | alpha_intensity – When enabled, the alpha for the texture will be based on the color's intensity. When disabled the alpha will be solid.