PhoenixFD 3.11.00

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