With Chaos Phoenix 5.20 we added support for 3ds Max 2024.
Now Phoenix has a floating user interface option in 3ds Max - from the Simulation rollout you can open the new Phoenix Main Window where you can dock all of the Simulator's floating rollouts. The layout of this window gets saved to the .MAX files so you can continue working with the workspace where you left off.
We added a new option in the Sources allowing to create velocities in a specified direction or even create varying velocities based on a texture map.
Simulations now are about 10-20% faster than in Phoenix 5.10 overall. We also added a new 'Use GPU to Aid Simulation' option that would run the fire/smoke PCG Fluidity method on the GPU instead of the CPU, so it could speed up simulations with up to 20%. Now the Simulator also has a new Simulation Speed rollout that shows how much each simulation phase takes and shows you tips on how to speed up your simulations even more.
We added a new Axis Lock option for locking the rotation of Active Bodies, allowed the Standalone Simulator to exclude geometries, our Deadline submission of simulations now has more options and is friendlier, and also there are many improvements to liquid simulations, including the ability to have the adaptive grid expand vertically in ocean simulations.
And, finally, as always, we fixed many bugs so Phoenix would be the most stable fluid software you've ever used!
Support for 3ds Max 2024
Support for geometries and Sources in the Scene Interaction Include/Exclude list
Generate images from the cache sequence after Deadline simscene simulations
Source option to create velocities in a certain direction or based on a texmap
Implemented the Simulation, Rendering, Preview, Scene Interaction and Input rollouts in QT so the Simulator shows faster when selected. Now these rollout can also float, be pinned or docked anywhere in 3ds Max
New floating GUI via a Phoenix Main window where all the floating rollouts can be docked and the layout is saved to max scenes and preserved between 3ds Max sessions
New 'Simulation Speed' rollout, showing the heaviest computation phases during simulation with tips on how to speed them up
Automatically create geometry for Toolbar Presets if none is selected
Apply the Splash "Initial Velocity Multiplier" when splash particles split into smaller ones, not just when they are born from liquid particles
Changed the defaults of the Max Outside Age, Splash Amount, Splash To Mist, Splash Split, Mist Air Drag, Splash Initial Vel. Multiplier and Randomization to more realistic ones
Sped up liquid simulations by up to 15%
Speed up with WetMap simulation up to 2x
New "Use GPU to Aid Simulation" option that runs the PCG Fluidity (Conservation) method on GPU, which could speed up the simulation overall
Option in the Axis Lock to lock the rotation of the Active Body to the original. This allows boats to lean while turning if this is a part of the original animation
After the 5.10 speedup, sped up more and reduced memory usage when emitting from hundreds of thousands particles, and also fixed a specific setup which slowed down - now some scenes are 5x faster than 5.10 and 25x faster than 5.01
Turn off the 'Read Cache for Preview' option of Simulators during simscene export to make the timeline scrolling faster
Support for rendering ocean with adaptive grid expanding vertically
Motion Blur support for Phoenix meshes with Arnold
Now the Phoenix installer ships the Deadline plugin for simscene submission - it's located in Phoenix's installation under a deadline_plugin directory, and must be copied to the 'plugins' directory in your Deadline repository
Sped up writing of VDB caches from the simulation or from the cache_converter with 30%
Sped up simulations using the Grid Velocity channel in the Output rollout (even if the Cacheless Simulation option ON) with up to 5%
Made the Background Color of the Extended GPU Preview global for all Simulators, accessible via right click menu in the viewport
Automatically enable viewport visibility and render visibility for the auto generated preview splines
Swapped the minimum and maximum thresholds for the voxel preview ranges - now the minimum is on top and the maximum is below
Equalized the 3ds Max Slice Preview GUI with the one in Maya
Sped up the particle preview of AUR caches from moving simulations when Auto Scale Color is ON
New 'Auto Origin' control in the Input rollout for automatically setting the Cache Origin and Timeline Origin to the beginning of the loaded sequence
Isosurface render mode support for TexUVW in vrscenes exported from 3ds Max
Improved the loading speed of particle systems in the Phoenix Particle Texture when Motion Blur is enabled
Show simulation progress when submitting .max scenes through Deadline via the Phoenix FD menu
New Windows icons of the Cache Converter, Standalone Preview, Standalone Simulator and the Node Viewer, as well as the associated AUR, VDB, F3D, PRT and SIMSCENE file formats
Show an error at the start of the simulation if the PHX_FOR_3DSMAX20NN_BIN environment variable is missing
Speed up the simulation of the Paints preset by enabling 'Render-time Only' on the Grid Texture used for coloring the mesh with the Grid RGB
Extended the "Unrecognized Argument" error message when the input path was not with the correct format
Hid the 'Lighting' option from the GPU Preview section - it's always ON by default
Movement of a Simulator with Fillup For Ocean caused the open boundaries to interact with the fluid
Setting a Phoenix Simulator as a Birth Volume was not working
Animating the 'Splash To Mist' to zero deleted all existing Mist particles
Foam Volume higher than 0 caused Foam particles to pass through the Simulator's jammed walls
Crash during simulation if an obstacle inside the Liquid Simulator is hidden and then unhidden, since Phoenix 5.00
Crash when starting active body simulation while editing an active body original's working pivot
Restoring a simulation with Active Bodies made the original bodies renderable
Restoring an Active Body simulation did offset the animation curve at the restore point
Active Bodies with center of mass different than the pivot moved differently than manually animated ones
Bodies rotating very slowly were not updated by the simulator every frame, especially with high number of Steps Per Frame
Changing the Geom Surface Voxels in the Scene Interaction rollout during simulation did not have any effect
Hidden or non renderable Phoenix Simulator did not work as Simulator Render Cutter or Particle Shader Render Cutter
Crash on render end with instanced Simulators in Corona
Wrong Grid-based Volumetric Motion Blur with VDBs whose bounding box does not start at 0,0,0
Crash when basing the Smoke Color on the Speed channel of VDBs whose bounding box does not start at 0,0,0
Hang when rendering in Volumetric Geometry Mode with disabled Volume Light Cache
Fire in Fully Visible mode did not render when Based On was set to the Grid RGB channel
Self-illumination of the Fire did not work if Based On was set to the Grid RGB channel
Rendering slow-down with Particle Shader in Bubbles mode with Volume Light cache disabled on NUMA machines between V-Ray 5 and V-Ray 6
Particle Shader with Color Map rendered differently between 3ds Max and V-Ray Standalone when the texture was in Object XYZ space
Black artifacts with Particle Shader in Points mode when there were many points on top of each other and the Point Radius or the Shadow Strength were high
Crash when rendering in Isosurface Render Mode and a Gradient Ramp texture, set to Lighting Gradient Type, was used as a V-Ray Environment texture map
Crash when quickly changing frames during V-Ray IPR CPU rendering with Motion Blur
Changing the frame during V-Ray IPR CPU didn't update the cache file correctly with Motion Blur enabled
No mesh motion blur when rendering with Redshift, since Phoenix 5.00
Crash with a Bend modifier applied over Auto Baked streamline splines while scrubbing the timeline or on render start
The simulation kept interacting with objects hidden using Hide by Category
Saved images from the GPU preview with frames outside the timeline had cache indices clamped to the nearest timeline frame
When Scattering was set to Disabled, the 'External Scatter Mult.' still affected the GPU Preview
Setting 'Load Cache For Preview' to 'Disable During Sim' and starting a simulation did not clear the GPU Preview
'Save Sequence' saved only one image if used after 'Save Current Frame'
Streamlines preview was not updated correctly until the current frame was changed
The streamlines viewport preview was transformed in an incorrect way in certain cases
Mesh for native streamlines object was not generated properly when the streamlines did sharp turns
Enabling the Force voxel preview disabled all the other voxel previews
Renaming a Simulator to the name of an existing one deleted the cache files of the existing one if the Output directory was using $(nodename) macro
Simulating to VDB did not show correct simulation info in the Simulation rollout
Can't open the particle ID channel of particle systems that have more than 268 million particles from AUR cache files
Converting from a VDB with vector3 color to AUR lost the background color and made it black
Crash if decompressing the ID channel of an AUR particle channel fails
The Property Lister Mass/Density option did not change when changing the selected preset and remained in Cork mode
Foam Texture did not render when the connected Ocean Texture' Rate of Change was set to 0
Ocean Texture used in VRayDisplacementMod prompted to adjust the settings of the modifier each time V-Ray IPR was started
The PRT reader's 'Velocity multiplier' option didn't affect the render unless the frame was changed
PRT sequences containing numbers and # format specifiers couldn't be rendered using the Particle Shader with V-Ray GPU or in vrscenes
Submitting a Deadline .max simulation job reset the Frame Range in the Render Settings
'Own Light Scatter Mult' and 'External Scatter Mult' were not greyed out when Scattering mode was Disabled or Ray-Traced
Enabling Initial Liquid Fill or Solid from the Phoenix Node Properties did not grey out many of the Active Body properties
Don't show Phoenix Node Properties for Tuners, Mappers, PRT Readers, Phoenix Forces and Lights
In 3ds Max 2019 and 2020, opening a saved scene with Simulator QT combo boxes whose default was not the 1st element but was set to the 1st element, showed a wrong element, since Phoenix 5.10