--- title: "3.00.01" canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/PHX4MAX/124626557/3.00.01" format: markdown --- *Official *release **Date –** Sept. 15, 2016   ## **New Features** --- ### **PhoenixFD** ** ** ** ** - Implemented simulation and render presets - Implemented Phoenix FD Toolbar for 3ds Max with quick simulation Start/Stop controls and quick creation of nodes - Added various Quick Setup presets to the Phoenix FD Toolbar for automatic creation of Simulators and Sources around an emitter - Support for 3ds Max 2017 - Splitted the PHXSimulator into separate LiquidSim and FireSmokeSim objects - New Simulation licenses to be run without GUI in Backburner/Deadline/3dsmaxcmd mode ### **Simulation** ** ** - FLIP Liquid solver - New vorticity confinement algorithm that adds high detail and improves the rolling of smoke and fire - PCG conservation that improves the behavior of smoke and fire - Follow Path force - Body Attraction and Morphing forces - Wave Force that transfers the effect of the PhoenixFDOceanTex onto the simulation - Direct Initial fill up option for objects - Re-timing by Time Bend resimulation for fire/smoke - Direct re-timing and re-meshing of FLIP liquids - Dedicated Mist particles - Discharge Modifiers for advanced control of sources - Controls for burning fuel depletion and smoke production - Allowed per object wetting - Simulation interaction with particle shapes - Scene scale multiplier per simulator ### Rendering - Implemented Foam Shader particle count multiplier - Render option to control the strength of volumetric shadows - Added shadow strength and point size options to the point shader - Added a separate control for the step of shadow rays - Ability to pop out and enlarge curves and color gradients - Support for matte objects - Added a displacement mode suitable for rendertime advection - Added a gamma correction control for Phoenix simulators only - Implemented a Procedural Foam Texture for the ocean surface - Support for the PRTReader in V-Ray RT - Enabled pure Volumetric rendering for V-Ray RT - Particle age render element ### Preview - GPU preview directly in the viewport - Support more than one light in the GPU preview ### **I/O** - Export particles and meshes with Exocortex Crate from the simulators and the PRTReader - Support for 3ds Max's built-in Alembic export - Allowed passing custom names for the OpenVDB/Field3D channels - Implement 32bit export of the RGB channel to aur caches ## **Modified Features** --- ### PhoenixFD - Open the right-click properties on a group of objects simultaneously - Changed the viewport representation of the Phoenix objects to wireframe icons - Changed the location of the sample scenes to 3ds Max's 'scenes' directory ### Simulation - Upres and add detail to a sim without changing the shape using the Resimulation - Allowed resimulation with both Wavelet and RGB - Ability to decrease resolution with resimulation - Direct cascade connection between Liquid simulators - Push the foam with moving geometry - Foam surface lock control - Allowed the PHXSource Noise to affect Brush and Inject modes - Support for NURBS shape obstacles, which are non-solid by default - Multiplier for the "Wind from movement" option ### Rendering - Optimized fire/smoke rendering in Volumetric mode - Optimized the Linear and Spherical samplers - Probabilistic volumetric rendering mode for Fire/Smoke and particles - Ability to select multiple particle groups in the Foam Shader - Foam Shader light cache speedup option - Optimized the Foam Shader's Point mode - Export the Foam Shader to vrscenes - Added a new Fire Opacity Mode in which the fire has its own opacity curve - Cutter support in Mesh mode rendering - Support for motion blurred render Cutter and Glass geometry - Motion blur clipping by the Cutter geometry for non-Mesh modes - Allowed gradual transition between the default Black Body Fire model and an artistic model using the 'Physically Based' option - Display the channel data range in the curve and color gradient render controls - Limited the volumetric render curves between 0 and 1 - Curve and color gradient markers can be moved across their neighbors - Allowed adding and removing or markers of the render curves/gradients by MAXScript - Gradient controls now display the colors with gamma correction - Using grid-based self-shadowing, create less lights for the scene than for the grid - The ocean subdivisions affect the mesh in cap mode too - Dome camera support for the ocean surface - Implemented velocity based fade out for the ocean displacement - Ability to create ocean from Houdini OpenVDB caches - Smoothing option for the input cache that can be used to remove grid artifacts - Improved and optimized the motion blur for volumetrics - V-Ray RT GPU animation rendering of PhoenixFD meshes - Added option to export Phoenix as a VRayVolumeGrid in vrscenes - The Fire emissive lights produce specular lighting - Display warnings if using motion blur without particle velocity or PA size multiplier without Age - Added more info to particle blending errors ### Preview - Automatic preview detail reduction - Automatic channel ranges for the viewport grid preview - Create default lights for the GPU preview if there are none - Show the RGB channel in the GPU preview - Improve the velocity voxel preview - Preview particles colored by the velocity - Allowed changing of the mesh preview color - Create low res viewport mesh preview in ocean mode - Channel data interval information in the cache info - Cache info describing which version of PhoenixFD was used during simulation - Display the fully resolved input/output/resim paths with frame numbers - Display a status text in the viewport while a simulation is running - Show the actual grid bounding box even if the cache content is not loaded ### I/O - Included the number format and file extension in input and output paths - *.aur caches use a four-digit zero-padded number for proper file sorting - Gathered the path controls in a single popup menu - Embedded render presets for imported cache files - Houdini, FumeFX and Maya Fluids presets added - Loading of Thinkbox Stoke OpenVDB/Field3D cache files - Updated the OpenVDB library to version 3.0 - Support for nameless OpenVDB channels - PRTReader loads the particle orientation - Display particle groups in the PRT export dialog regardless of the current frame - Retry and display a message if a simulation cache is not written properly ### PhoenixFDGridTex - Rework the selector on the Phoenix texture to prevent circular reference error - Added a scalar Speed channel ### PhoenixFDParticleTex - Added an option to disable the Particle Texture when not rendering ### AuraSDK - Samples to read and visualize a cache file ## **Deprecated Features** --- ### PhoenixFD - Dropped support for Windows XP ### Simulation - Deprecated the Slow Moving advection ### Rendering - Dropped the legacy Fire emissive light placing modes ** ** ** ** ## **Bug Fixes** --- ### PhoenixFD - The Phoenix texmaps were in the General instead of the PhoenixFD category - Crash after selecting the Simulator in the Foam Shader and undo-ing - Right-click Phoenix menu items may not appear in 3ds Max 2016 or newer - Atmosphere is created even if no Phoenix objects exist in the scene - Installation doesn't restart the license server and sometimes fails to remove old servers - Crash on browsing when the previous path was set to a password protected server - Crash when doing File->Reset on a paused simulator - Merging scenes with Phoenix objects does not work properly - Crash when deleting an X-Ref-ed scene ### Simulation - Non-solid objects emitting particles did not export particle ID and Age channels - The Patterns Strength parameter throws foam particles high in the air - The 3ds Max Vortex force produces different results on each run - Wrong texture mapping of source discharge and channels with volume brush and inject - Crash when using a texture map with noise as discharge map - Rotating simulator with adaptive grid produces wrong forces - The simulation sometimes halts at a random frame - Deadlock when two 3ds Max instances simulate simultaneously - Wrong position of the particles when resimulating with increased grid resolution - Foam and splash can be born through jammed walls or frozen obstacles with PHXSimulator - Crash when the cell size is set to zero - Crash with simulation of large wrapped grids - Sometimes when a new simulation is started, the gravity has wrong direction and magnitude - The per-object velocity multiplier overrides the source's velocity value, instead of scaling it - Different behavior between the positive and the negative open walls of the simulator - Diagonal spike artifacts with Multi-Pass advection at low speed or high SPF - Burning depletes Fuel faster proportionally to the Steps per frame - Leaks from geometry container when the wall is less than two cells wide - VRayDistanceTex does not update with moving geometry - Crash with geometry from the Power Translator plugin - Meshes created from spline with extrude modifier are not taken into account by the simulation - Path Deform animations don't react with the simulator - Animated scale of rigid bodies is not accounted for in velocity calculations - The grid fit camera algorithm sometimes allows the simulator to shrink too much - The adaptive grid expands through walls entirely blocked by frozen objects - Adaptive grid can super-expand to unreasonable size in case of a short burst of high velocity - When an adaptive limit is reached, the grid refuses to expand at all instead of expanding up to the limit - Crash when adaptive grid memory allocation fails - Adaptive grid can't expand over 2.1 billion voxels - Hang when additional output channels are selected during adaptive grid simulation with preallocation - Adaptive grid with jammed walls creates velocity at the walls in fire/smoke mode - Occasional jittering with wavelet turbulence and adaptive grid - Wrong bounding box with adaptive grid and "No Smaller than Initial Grid" off - Crash when simulating with Wavelet and Forward Transfer - Crash with grid-only resimulation including drag particles with timeout - A hidden PHXSource continues to emit - The cascade connection produces gaps when the source is moving - The Estimated Time Left reported after simulation restore is wrong ### Rendering - Fixed various issues where the Ocean Surface does not fit the rendering or preview - Ocean gets clipped both in the render and viewport if pixel aspect is set to a value lower than 1.0 - Can't build ocean when the Invert Volume option is on - Cap mode with Invert Volume on renders as infinite surface - Wrong normals on the ocean stitching strip at certain camera angles - Meshing artifacts at the sim border when the ocean level is higher than the simulator - Broken ocean displacement when the camera is oriented exactly vertically - Wrong ocean meshing at low camera height - Ocean mesh is not visible on some frames - In Mesh render mode, the surface displacement works as if there is an ocean - Crash on render with enabled displacement but without a map - Imported ocean caches from Houdini can mesh with holes at the bottom - An additional colored mesh may show during rendering in mesh mode - The mesh is still rendered even if not renderable or hidden - The foam displacement does not match the liquid displacement - Foam Shader ignored the "Invert Cutter" option - Foam Shader caustics did not work if GI visibility is off - Local and distributed foam render buckets differ with Foam Shader size variation - Fixed multiple issues where random colored bubbles would appear during distributed rendering - Bubble mode with displacement produces white areas on the foam - Foam Shader pressure variation causes flickering in animation - Foam Shader did not read properly the Size and Age channels from Thinkbox Krakatoa's PRTLoader - No Motion Blur with Foam Shader rendering PRTReader particles from Phoenix FD - Foam sliding on inclined geometry is hidden by it during the rendering - The point shader produces different opacity when the image resolution is changed - The point shader produces very different renders in ortho - Container in Volumetric Geometry mode is not shaded in Multi Matte Element - Volumetric Heat Haze rendering mode does not render correctly - Frame blending does not work properly with adaptive grid - Loop playback of an adaptive grid cuts out portions of the grid - Inverted render Cutter cuts all the emissive lights outside it, instead of inside it - Wrong shading if emissive/diffuse/transparency source is set to 'texture' without actually providing one - Crash when rendering in mesh mode a simulator that was used as a cascade source for a fire/smoke simulator - Different buckets in distributed rendering mode with light cache - Can't exclude a Phoenix atmospheric from a V-Ray or 3ds Max light - The lighting render elements do not include the grid self-illumination with LC off - Black grid self-illumination with disabled scattering and very thick smoke - No grid self-illumination in geometry mode without light cache - The emissive lights construction is not thread safe - Emissive lights preprocess runs even when the atmosphere is disabled - Crash with emissive lights enabled and V-Ray's Hidden Lights option disabled - Crash while rendering with V-Ray RT if the additional lights are decreased - Crash when loading a cache while V-Ray RT is running - Motion blur remains the same length when varying the FPS in V-Ray RT - Rendering with motion blur and duration=0 will preprocess forever - Volumetric mode ignores the V-Ray object properties motion blur override samples - Simulator moving with camera renders with motion blur as if static - Moving simulator has no motion blur in Volumetric mode and clipped motion blur in Volumetric Geometry mode - Simulator does not render with motion blur, velocity channel, "play speed" set to 0 and "wind from movement" option turned on - Artifacts on the wall of the simulator when rendering liquids in "Isosurface" mode. - Noise on flat iso-surfaces created from textures - Fix preview and mesh mode for the Surface Texture - Fog correction produces improper blending with semi-transparent geometry - Reflected geometry misses Fire lighting in some buckets - Wrong rendering with V-Ray 3.0, geometry mode and other geometry inside the simulator - Crash when rendering with Defscanline with foam tint enabled - Crash with V-Ray Toon, VRayNormals and Volumetric Geometry ### Preview - The preview of OpenVDB caches doesn't always update when changing frames - The cell preview stops drawing after V-Ray RT is used - New versions of 3ds Max hang when the GPU preview runs out of memory - Mesh preview crashes on 3ds Max 2016 and newer with Nitrous DX9 - Crash on enabling mesh preview with a non-existant surface channel - Negative frames with mesh preview enabled change the preview time - Cell preview does not update when changing 'Load Nearest if Missing' - Crash when enabling Shaded with Maps in the viewport for a scene with ocean tex and foam tex ### I/O - Thinkbox Krakatoa always rendered the same frame for Phoenix particles in animation - Unable to pick Simulator/PRTReader via Thinkbox Stoke as Velocity sources - Thinkbox Frost isn't working with cache where not all particle types are exported - Cannot export a sequence via Thinkbox XMesh - Cannot export PRT files to a UNC network location - PRT files from Phoenix cannot be loaded via Thinkbox Krakatoa's PFlow birth - Crash when exporting PRT when manually setting the range past the cache range - PRTReader does not return the particle ages - Wrong winding of the faces of a meshed Field3D cache - OpenVDB levelset caches render with inverted normals and winding - Can't blend between imported OpenVDB or Field3D files - The container jitters or has incorrect position with OpenVDB caches from FumeFX - The Speed channel is not working when rendering a Field3D/OpenVDB cache - Imported OpenVDB files have wrong orientation in V-Ray RT - Field3D files from FumeFX using boundless sim or wavelet are not scaled correctly - Field3D caches over 4GB cannot be loaded - Aur cache files over 2GB cannot be loaded - Too many simulated particles break the export compressor and cause a crash on read - Cannot use UNICODE cache paths - Can't load negative frame numbers - Phoenix frames folder is created for each new 3ds Max scene saved ### **PhoenixFDGridTex** - Crash at the moment a PhoenixFDGridTex is assigned as an input to a composite map ### **Turbulence** - Crash when creating a Turbulence helper and dragging its size to zero