The rendering process in Chaos Phoenix is separated from the simulation process, because simulated caches contain only simulation data, and no render settings.
However, for ease of use, the Liquid Simulator object also contains a Rendering rollout. This rollout offers modes and options for rendering the simulator grid’s content.
Phoenix provides a ton of flexibility for rendering your caches, and offers multiple render modes that can be divided into two types: surfaces and volumetric.
Liquid simulations are typically rendered using one of the surface render modes. Meanwhile, volumetric modes are typically used for rendering fire and smoke. |
By default, the Grid Liquid Channel is exported to the cache files during simulation, meaning that the simulator voxelizes the Liquid Particles into a Grid Channel. As a result, liquid simulations can indirectly generate a liquid surface from Liquid Particles.
This makes it possible to render the liquid as a mesh, using one of the surface render modes, such as Mesh, Isosurface, Cap Mesh and Ocean Mesh. The meshed liquid then behaves just like any regular geometry, meaning you can assign 3ds Max or V-Ray materials to the Simulator, and there is no need for a dedicated shader.
The Rendering Rollout also contains additional controls for this meshing process, to customize the appearance of the surface. Note that since Phoenix is very flexible, it also enables you to render liquid simulations using a volumetric render mode, to create more advanced types of effects. |
When rendering as a mesh, Liquid Particles are shaded by a material assigned to the Liquid Simulator object. However, secondary effect particles such as Foam, Splash, Mist and Wetmap particles must be shaded using the Phoenix Particle Shader. Simply create a Particle Shader object, and add the Liquid Simulator to it. The Particle Shader can then read the cache data loaded by the Simulator, and shade the particles as either Points, Bubbles, Cellular, Splashes, or Fog, depending on the mode you select. |
Advanced control over the shading of Liquid Particles is provided with the Phoenix Grid Texture. It can be used to drive the properties of a material applied to a liquid surface, for example, to mix colored liquids together, or function as a mask for blending wet and dry materials when using Wetmap particles.
UI Path: ||Select Liquid Simulator | LiquidSim object|| > Modify panel > Rendering rollout |
Render settings are not stored within the caches themselves, so if you want to use the same render settings for another simulator or project, there is the option to save and load them as Phoenix Render Presets in the “.tpr” file format. |
Render Presets... – Opens a menu for loading and saving different presets. The following options are available:
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The proper value for the Isosurface Level parameter depends on the numerical range of the surface channel. For example, Phoenix liquids are kept in the range of 0 to 1. A value of 0 means there is no liquid in a certain voxel, and a value of 1 means the cell is 100% full of liquid. Values in between indicate a certain mixture of air and liquid. For such cache files, an Isosurface Level value of 0.5 is best for visualizing the surface between the air and liquid. Imported caches from Houdini, on the other hand, use positive and negative values to indicate whether a voxel is inside or outside the liquid volume, so a correct "halfway" Isosurface Level value would be 0.0. Please check the Grid Channel Ranges page for information about other grid channels.
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