Chaos Group has unveiled Phoenix FD 3.11.00 for Maya 2018, is a powerful tool for fluid simulations. Aimed to meet the needs of VFX artist to simulate fire, smoke, explosions as well as liquids, foam and splashes, it has now become universal simulation software for every production house.
New Features
FLIP Solver
- RGB channel simulation for Foam, Splash and Mist particles - now secondary particles can be born from Sources mapped with colored textures and can change color during simulation using the Mapper
Cache I/O
- Direct loading of huge sparse OpenVDB caches without downsampling
Particle Texture
- Particle Texture color based on Particle Channels - the Particle Texture can be plugged into the Particle Shader and can shade particles based on their Age, Speed, Size, Position, etc.
Mapper
- Added Affected Particle Systems list to the Mapper so it can separately affect Foam, Splash and Mist
Submitting Simulations
- Deadline 10 support in the Submit Simulation menu
Improvements
Preview
- Sped up the Preview Auto Range algorithm
Scene Body Interaction
- Sped up the scene interaction with complex or moving geometries
Cache I/O
- Optimized loading of caches containing Velocity channel
- Added channel smoothing options for the Velocity channel
- Allowed grid Channel Smoothing to be applied over imported channels with any value range
- Apply the Smoothing Random Variation over all voxels regardless of the Smooth Threshold
Volumetric Shader
- Sped up velocity sampling during volumetric motion blur
Particle Shader
- Sped up rendering in Bubble, Cellular and Splash mode using the Phoenix Light Cache up to 2x
Ocean Mesher
- Sped up the Displacement Fade Volume algorithm with complex or moving geometries
Body Force
- Sped up the Body Force with complex or moving geometries
Grid Texture
- Box, Linear and Spherical Sampler Type for the Grid Texture
Maya Integration
- Export a "phoenix_velocity" color set in Maya Mesh mode in order to have motion blur in this mode and for exported Alembics
- Use distance attributes for all distance, velocity and acceleration options of Phoenix
- Duplicate Particle Group nodes when duplicating a Simulator if Foam or Splash simulation is enabled
- Put the 'Based on' section at the top of the Fire, Smoke Color and Smoke Opacity rollouts in Maya
SDK
- Exposed a PhoenixTextureNode base class for recognizing Phoenix texture nodes
Removed Features
Cache I/O
- Dropped support for the AUR1 cache format. Caches simulated with Phoenix builds before 13 Mar 2015 will not open anymore
Ocean Texture
- Removed the Meter Scale option. Now the Wind Speed option is handled identically to 3ds Max and by default is always 3 m/s, regardless of the scene scale
Bug Fixes
FLIP Solver
- Viscosity calculations used extra memory and processing time even without Variable Viscosity
- Foam Pattern forces pushed particles vertically which makes them less effective
- Crash when the Mapper affects a FLIP particle channel which was not enabled in the Simulator Output
- Liquid and Foam particles sometimes get shot away on collision with Confine Geometry
- Fillup for Ocean did not clear the volume of Solid bodies with Clear Inside
- Voxels under the Fillup For Ocean level and cut by Confine Geometry were not included in the ocean mesh
- The Time Scale parameter did not take any effect if animated or changed during FLIP liquid simulation
- Could not start FLIP liquid resimulation if the first frame had 0 liquid particles
- Liquid Source Motion Velocity did not work for emitted Foam and Splash particles
Scene Body Interaction
- Voxelization became increasingly slower until Maya was closed and re-opened
Volumetric Shader
- Smoke rendering with "Ray-traced" Scattering produced brighter GI when compared to 3ds Max
- Rendering in Volumetric mode with a spherical camera and manual clipping planes flipped the back side of the image
Particle Shader
- Bubbles and Splashes were rendered differently on a different number of threads with Phoenix Light Cache enabled
- Grid Texture plugged into the Color Map of a Particle Shader did not map correctly when Auto Mapping was off and Use Liquid Simulator was on
- Particle Texture plugged into the Color Map of a Particle Shader did not map correctly when Use Liquid Simulator was on
V-Ray RT and IPR
- Volumetric Geometry mode rendered black with V-Ray IPR
Ocean Mesher
- The Displacement Fade Volume caused grid artifacts on the ocean mesh
Wave Force
- The Wave Force had its up axis reversed
- Boiling effect on the open grid borders when using Wave Force with Fillup for Ocean
VRScenes
- Crash when the transforms of the PhxShaderSim plugin and the Node plugin in Volumetric Geometry mode were mismatched in a VRScene
Cache I/O
- The grid RGB channel was missing when saving the cache files in OpenVDB format since Phoenix FD 3.10
- Wrong velocity direction and motion blur when importing OpenVDB files from FumeFX
- Wrong velocity scale when importing OpenVDB files from Maya Fluids
- Couldn't load OpenVDB files whose "file_voxel_count" metadata is 0, though they contain active voxels
- Crash when writing cache files at the exact moment while the same or another simulator is reading them
- Cache saving became increasingly slower until Maya was closed and re-opened, since Phoenix FD 3.10
GPU Preview
- GPU preview in Viewport 2.0 did not take into account the Max Lights option
Preview
- Body Force force preview did not update when the simulator or the body was moving
- Crash when simulating two interacting simulators and zooming the viewport
Presets
- Maya Fluids preset enabled the mesh preview
nParticles
- Incorrect emission from nParticles if a number of particles died
Render Curves
- Adding a new spline point to a straight sloped section in the render diagrams produced curvature
Maya Integration
- Quick Setups created the Simulator with wrong size if Maya units were not centimeters
- If all light links were broken for a Simulator, all lights started illuminating it
- Light Linking did not affect the Particle Shader
- Fixed a MEL error when using the Set Selected Object as Confine Geometry button
- Adding GPU preview lights or forces via the GUI buttons replaced the sets instead of appending to them
- phxfdStartBatch()'s start and end frames were clamped by the start and end of the timeline
- Cached Frames info was updated only after playing through the cached frames
- "..." menu worked in only one Attribute Editor window when Copy Tab was used
About PhoenixFD. Phoenix FD is a fluid dynamics simulator intended to create a wide range of effects including smoke, flames, liquids, and explosions. It is used for visual effects, architectural and product visualizations, creation of game assets, etc.
Phoenix FD comes with a handy shelf which offers presets for common setups such as large scale ocean simulation or gasoline explosion, or small scale setups like coffee, beer, candle, etc.
Currently the only officially supported renderer for Maya is V-Ray. In Maya Mesh mode, rendering is supported by any CPU renderer for Maya. Phoenix FD can also be rendered by 3rd party plugins or external software after exporting the simulation grid, mesh or particle data to OpenVDB, Field3D, Alembic, V-Ray VRmesh or VRscene. Phoenix can also shade data from other software with its dedicated volumetric shader for fire/smoke or its Particle Shader by importing OpenVDB or Field3D data.
Phoenix FD for Maya also provides real-time GPU preview of fire/smoke in the viewport, textures which can be used for ocean simulations and rendering or to extract grid and particle data from the simulator, dedicated forces which can drive and art-direct the simulations, interoperability with Bullet, integration with nParticles, as well as MEL and Python scripting and a Phoenix C++ SDK.
About About Chaos Group. Chaos Group is a worldwide leader in computer graphics technology, helping artists and designers create photoreal imagery and animation for design, television, and feature films. Chaos Group specializes in physically-based rendering and simulation software used daily by top design studios, architectural firms, advertising agencies, and visual effects companies around the globe. Today, the company's research and development in cloud rendering, material scanning, and virtual reality is shaping the future of creative storytelling and digital design. Founded in 1997, Chaos Group is privately owned with offices in Sofia, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Seoul, and Tokyo.
Product: PhoenixFD
Version: 3.11.00
Supported Architectures: x64
Website Home Page : Language: english
System Requirements: PC
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7even SP1 or newer
Software Prerequisites: Autodesk Maya 2018 and V-Ray for Maya 3.6 or later
Size: 58.6 mb
Download link:
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