PhoenixFD 3.0.500

New Features

Phoenix FD
- Support for Maya 2018
Simulation
- Resimulation over OpenVDB caches exported from Phoenix FD
- Restoring simulation from OpenVDB caches exported from Phoenix FD
- Load the simulation initial state from OpenVDB or Field3D
- Option to control the randomness in velocity direction at Splash birth
- Option to allow only expansion of the adaptive grid, but disable shrinking
Rendering
- Stronger Approximate Scattering for brighter regions and lower scattering for the darker regions of the same volume
- Added a new frame blending method using both Velocity and Advection Origin, producing smoother fire/smoke retiming
Preview
- Viewport preview for visualizing the influence of both native and Phoenix forces
Particle Shader
- Option to allow offsetting the particles vertically
Source
- Equalized source emission from particles with 3ds Max
- Support for using meshes from particle instancer as obstacles or emitters
- Implemented support for using the Particle Texture and Grid Texture as masks for a Source
Curve Controls
- Ability to horizontally or vertically stretch and flip the selection in curve and gradient controls
Follow Path
- Added an option to break the spline into segments which influence the simulator simultaneously
Tools
- Added a command line cache_converter tool, allowing conversion of already existing AUR cache sequences to OpenVDB without simulating again
SDK
- Added a new interface for sampling volumetrics at render time

Modified Features

Simulation
- Change adaptive limit defaults to non-zero
- Display an error if the FLIP resimulation cannot find Liquid particles
Rendering
- Use particle ID instead of Age channel when looping particles
- Sped up Ocean construction
Source
- Disable Motion Velocity for the sources in Maya by default as in 3ds Max
Scripting
- Use Grid space for script commands by default
- Ability to start a new simulation in the OnSimulationEnd() script callback
SDK
- Equalized the public interface classes between 3ds Max and Maya

Removed Features

SDK
- Removed all old public interfaces
Phoenix FD
- Removed the "Initialize from Object" function from the Phoenix FD menu - a Source in Brush mode can be used for the same effect

Bug Fixes

Simulation
- The General-Purpose Time Bend Resimulation was not working correctly in Phoenix FD 3.04
- Restoring Resimulation was not working in Phoenix FD 3.04Occasional crash when the simulator is deleted while the simulation is running
- Sampling textures during simulation without using V-Ray did not work since Phoenix FD 3.00.02
- Resimulation might produce less smoke and temperature
- Liquid particles penetrate the walls of complex or thin static geometry
- After loading a cache or simulating, CPU usage remains high on machines with many threads
- Overlapping Solid Fire/Smoke emitters in Surface Force mode emit inside each other's volumes
- Instability with high incoming velocities through the grid walls
- Fire/Smoke simulations using Solid emitters in Surface Force mode with Noise produce different results on each run
- Fire/Smoke simulations using Solid emitters and Buffered or PCG Conservation produce different results on each run
- Non-solid sources in Surface Force mode do not affect Liquid simulations
- Foam born from Sources in Surface Force mode does not respect the simulator Foam Size and Variation settings
- When splashes split, they form visible lines of particles
- Big difference between Splash behavior with Liquid-Like at 0 and at 0.001
- Increasing the Splash Threshold never eliminates all born splashes
- Foam Rise and Falling speed set to 0 do not freeze foam particles
- Submerged foam particles ascend high into the air near negative open simulator walls
- The Simulate Air Effects option may create huge velocities at voxels where the liquid contacts geometry
- Random hang when restoring the simulation with more than 1 Steps Per Frame
- The Simulator includes hidden objects when set to Include mode, even though Exclude hidden is set
- Crash if Adaptive Grid with high preallocation fails during simulation startup
- Adaptive Grid's Extra Margin for Liquid simulators does not work
- Grid artifacts with Liquid simulation using Confine Geometry with curved surfaces
- Liquid particles get created on the back end of a moving liquid simulator with Initial Fillup, raising the liquid level
- Missing warning when starting the simulation after adding solid geometry to a Volume source through Outliner
- Simulation stops due numerical error without printing a warning or error
- Overlapping a Solid Surface Force source with a non-solid body with Clear Inside does not clear the smoke
Rendering
- Artifacts when rendering overlapping containers in Volumetric Geometry mode
- Flickering when rendering Smoke Color based on a gradient with varying data range with Approximate Scattering
- Crash when blending caches with Drag particles
- Random crash when blending between frames which contain very few particles
- Crash when rendering in Mesh mode with Surface channel set to Texture
- Sequence render with V-Ray and Fire Lights keeps showing the lights after the cache sequence ends
- Smoothing Particle Size is always 1 when rendering
- Subdivided Ocean surface may abruptly change its detail with animated camera
- Rendering in Isosurface mode using Cutter produces wrong normals in Maya
- Using Liquid Particles for Mesh Smoothing together with Cutter Geometry still uses particles outside the Cutter
- Using Liquid Particles for Mesh Smoothing does not take effect until the Smoothness is raised to 3
- Warning about using local machine Input path for distributed rendering even if the path is UNC but starts with forward slashes
- Cannot key the Playback Mode parameter during sequence render
- Fix dark and non-uniform horizon using the Horizon Roughness option
Particle Shader
- Bucket artifacts when rendering dense bubbles with the Particle Shader's light cache enabled
- Particle Shader does not displace particles according to the connected Liquid Simulator's transform
- Particle Shader's Particle Reduction parameter doesn't use particle ID which leads to particles disappearing in animation
Preview
- Crash when enabling Mesh preview when using displacement by a Grid Texture
- Crash when enabling Mesh preview when Surface Channel is set to Texture
- Crash when opening the Hypershade with a Paints preset with Play Speed less than 1.0
- Crash when rendering a simulator via mayapy with Mesh preview enabled
- The running Simulation info overlaps the Viewport Renderer info
- Particle channels in the Cache File Content list are wrong when using Loop with Overlap
- Voxel Preview color can not be changed in Maya 2017 and 2018
- Preview artifacts in Ocean Mesh mode near the camera in Maya
- Slowdown due to Simulator reading cache files even when hidden in Maya, using Viewport 2
I/O
- Error about not enough memory to save the cache when a particle channel is over 2GB
Source
- Disabling the Emit Liquid source option does not stop liquid discharge in Volume Inject mode
- Mapped source discharge by a texture does not clamp the texture input between 0 and 1
- Discharge Modifier based on normals in object space use them in wrong scale
- Discharge Modifier by World Speed does not work correctly with simulator attached to moving emitter
- nParticles don't affect the simulation velocity even when Motion Velocity is enabled from the Source
- Crash when using VRayVertexColors with Set Index as an RGB source map
Body Force
- Body Force does not affect parts of the grid that expanded using Adaptive Grid
Follow Path
- The Fade Start parameter was not working in Phoenix FD 3.04
- Artifacts when simulating using a FollowPath force on a circular spline
Turbulence
- Turbulence's Speed parameter in Maya is much slower than in 3ds Max
Mapper
- The Mapper cannot completely freeze or exactly set velocity in the simulation
- Grid velocity from the Mapper has Y/Z axes swapped
Presets
- Errors when saving and loading presets
PhoenixFDGridTex
- Crash when plugging a Phoenix Grid Texture through a Multiply/Divide node into the displacement slot
Scripting
- phxfdBatchResim tries to restore the resimulation instead of starting it
Submitter
- Can't submit to Backburner if the Scene Copy Dir ends with a slash