Official release

Date – 27 Mar, 2019

Download – Build 3.13.00

With Phoenix FD 3.13 we have focused on adding many frequently requested features, improving usability and support for 3ds Max 2020.

Complete changelog:

  Support for 3ds Max 2020

  Modulate or replace the Fire Opacity with a Texture in 'Use Own Opacity' mode

  Saving of Phoenix simulated particles to OpenVDB caches

  Loading of OpenVDB point data for rendering using the Particle Shader or emitting from Sources

  Option to allow only expansion of the adaptive grid, but disable shrinking for the Liquid Simulator

  Resimulation of the RGB channel for FLIP particles

  Export of Particle Velocity for WetMap over moving geometries

  Use less memory for simulation of WetMap when 'Sticky Liquid' is disabled

  Grid RGB and Viscosity channels are now reconstructed from FLIP particles when using Time Bend Controls, preventing render flickering

  Optimized volumetric rendering when Smoke Opacity is modulated by a texture

  Motion Blur Interval Center support for the Particle Shader

  Name new Particle Shaders "ParticleShader###" instead of "PHXFoam###"

  Support for rendering Ocean Mesh from multiple cameras via Batch Render

  Support for rendering Ocean Mesh with Stereoscopic camera

  Show the force preview in the box of the loaded cache, if any, and in the simulation box otherwise

  Updated OpenVDB from version 3 to version 5

  Export Phoenix meshes with vertex velocity using 3ds Max 2019+'s built-in Alembic export into the 'Max_Map_Channel velocity' color set. Used for motion blur rendering with V-Ray Next update 1.1 or newer

  Separate export to Alembic for the different particle systems of a Simulator by exporting the "Particles [] of []" nodes via 3ds Max's built-in exporter

  Added the running Simulator's node name to the simulation viewport status

  Renamed the Mapper's 'Time Constant' to 'Buildup Time'

  The Phoenix FD 3ds Max plugin could not load together with V-Ray builds older than V-Ray 3.6. Restored compatibility with V-Ray 3.1

  Intersecting a moving obstacle with a Solid emitter left non-emitting voxels after the obstacle

  Clear Inside did not clear the volume of Non-Solid emitters in Surface Force mode in the Fire/Smoke Simulator

  Empty adaptive grid expanded by itself when Extra Margin was used and Expand and Don't Shrink was On

  Crash with 'Simulate Air Effects' and forces affecting the 'Air' system of a Liquid Simulator, since Phoenix FD 3.04

  WetMap was not equally generated over flat surfaces and might not appear on horizontal or vertical surfaces

  Subsiding liquid at the front of a long moving ocean container with Motion Inertia

  Fixed various issues with moving ocean containers producing disturbances and waves at their borders

  Trying to resimulate over a liquid cache with no Liquid particles showed different messages the first and second time

  Simulation restore did not go back to the last backup frame and could cause a crash, since Phoenix FD 3.12

  Voxelization of a large amount of small bodies used excessive amounts of memory, since Phoenix FD 3.11

  Voxelization of hundreds of geometries with very small sizes was slower on many threads compared to simulating on 1 thread

  Geometry with Initial Liquid Fill which was also selected in a Source in Volume Brush or Volume Inject mode created double amount of liquid particles and this caused explosions

  Particles with small size used as emitters for Liquid had random Discharge strength

  Sources did not emit from Thinking Particles when simulating through Deadline or Backburner

  Flickering FLIP liquid mesh near emitters when Input Play Speed was below 1

  When two or more Simulators had any overlapping walls, volumetrics weren't rendered correctly with V-Ray GPU

  Crash with instanced Simulators in Volumetric Render Mode during sequence render with V-Ray GPU [requires V-Ray Next update 1.1 or newer]

  Crash when rendering a scene containing any Particle Shaders with V-Ray GPU

  Crash when rendering a scene containing a VolumeGrid and a Simulator with V-Ray GPU

  Shading volumes using only textures still required a loaded cache file with V-Ray GPU

  Volumes loaded from OpenVDB caches that contain internal rotation rendered clipped with V-Ray GPU

  Fire Lights kept illuminating the scene after the cache sequence ended during sequence render

  Crash when rendering a volume with Create Lights intersecting a geometry with a Light Material

  Using many chained texture maps in the volumetric shader produced different renders of the same frame when rendering repeatedly

  Volumetric Light Cache still consumed additional memory even when it should have been disabled in Progressive V-Ray rendering

  Memory leak when rendering with GI and any V-Ray render elements

  Particle Shader particles appeared smaller when exported and rendered from a VRScene

  Crash when rendering a Particle Shader without a linked Liquid Simulator, since Phoenix FD 3.12

  Slowdown of Particle Shader Bubble/Splash/Cellular rendering with linked Liquid Simulator and 'Use Light Cache', introduced in Phoenix FD 3.04

  Slowdown the second time you rendered a large amount of Foam particles

  Ocean Mesh used excessive amounts of memory when rendered with Spherical Panorama camera

  Ocean Mesh was not built correctly when the viewport was set to Orthographic mode

  Crash when rendering Ocean mesh with Cutter Geom and Motion Blur

  Missing mesh polygons on the container border when rendering in Ocean Mesh mode

  Flipped mesh polygons on the container border when rendering in Ocean Mesh mode with Mesh Smoothness above 0

  Crash if creating a circular dependency between a Grid Texture and a Simulator's displacement, when 'Skip the Displacement' was off

  Crash during fire/smoke simulation if using a Grid Texture reading the Temperature of the same Simulator in a Mapper affecting Temperature with 'Initializer' Off

  Crash when rendering a scene with Grid Texture used as a mask in a Blend material with Motion Blur

  VRayVolumeGrid could be selected as a Phoenix Grid texture Source Node

  Boiling effect on the open grid borders when using Wave Force with Fillup for Ocean and there was geometry over the bottom

  Voxel preview of temperature around 200 Kelvins with As Fire enabled displayed bright red and pink voxels

  Preview Auto reduction did not work for the Force preview

  Constant mesh rebuild in 3ds Max viewport when the timeline start was not an exact frame

  When render viewport was locked, Ocean Mesh preview was drawn from that perspective in any viewport

  Min-max channel range of AUR caches randomly displayed very large numbers

  Crash when repeatedly pressing Export PRT particles

  Forward scrolling the timeline slider while simulating and looking at the Simulation rollout hung the simulation

  Selecting 'Don't show again' on dialogues caused some messages to not appear at all even on the first run

  The warning about DR and local paths still appeared even after all Simulators were deleted from the scene

  The installer for V-Ray 3 placed vray_phoenix.dll into '3dsmax XXXX for x64/bin/plugins' instead of 'RT for 3ds Max XXXX for x64/bin/plugins'