This page introduces the FireSmokeSim object and its rollouts.
Section Contents
Page Contents
Overview
The Fire/Smoke Simulator is intended to produce realistic fire, smoke and explosion effects. The dynamics governing the simulation are based on real-world physics.
The Fire/Smoke Simulator uses a grid-based core (a 3-dimensional array of voxels). The simulated channels are transferred through the grid based on the specified parameter values. The result of the simulation is a sequence of cache files containing the simulated channels (Temperature, Smoke, etc). These cache files are used later in the rendering process to convert the raw simulation data into realistic images.
The simulator is represented as a single object for convenience. Internally, it contains two completely separate parts: a simulator component and a rendering component. Parameters that control the simulation are separated from those associated with the shading and rendering. As a result, no roll-out will contain mixed parameters, and no parameter will affect both the simulation and rendering.
Rollouts
After creating a FireSmokeSim object, the following rollouts can be accessed in the Modify panel:
- Simulation - Controls the simulation and displays statistical information.
- Resimulation - Uses a simulated cache sequence with exported velocity to drive a new simulation. Capable of adding time effects, increasing the resolution, etc.
- Grid - Controls the size and resolution of the simulation grid.
- Dynamics - Controls dynamics such as cooling, smoke dissipation, vorticity, advection, etc.
- Fuel - Controls the simulation of burning when Fuel is present in the simulation.
- Interaction - Specifies how the FireSmokeSim interacts with other objects in the scene.
- Output - Specifies how the simulation cache files are saved.
- Input - Determines the path of input files for rendering and previewing.
- Preview - Controls how the simulation is displayed in the viewport.
- Rendering - Controls how the simulation is rendered and includes additional volumetric options.
- Export - Controls exporting meshes and particles from Phoenix.
- Authorization - Displays information when license information cannot be obtained.
Upgrading from Previous Versions of Phoenix FD
Due to many improvements to the Phoenix solver, recreating simulations the same way you did in older versions of Phoenix may not be possible because of changes to the solvers and the UI. Here are some things to be aware of when upgrading from older versions of Phoenix FD.
- If you have a scene created with Phoenix v.2 and you open it with version 3, it will keep all the old settings for you, some of which are not visible to newer versions and the result should be roughly the same.
- If you try to replicate the same simulation setup with Phoenix v.3 and set all the parameters with the same values you would not obtain the same result. The new simulation will be different because Phoenix v.3 uses a new solver for liquids and fire/smoke.