--- title: "4.00.00" canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/PHX4MAX/125278678/4.00.00" format: markdown --- Official release Date – 21 November, 2019 Download – Build 4.00.00 New Voxel and Particle Tuners Change each voxel and particle's properties during simulation, and use customizable conditions to delete particles. thinkingParticles Integration We’ve added Phoenix operators for thinkingParticles and you can now emit fluid via Phoenix sources from thinkingParticles geometries. Active Bodies Float your objects over pools or wash them away in floods with basic rigid body simulation for Phoenix liquids. Tex UVW Transport texture coordinates along fluids during simulation and use them for advanced render-time effects. Standalone Cache Preview tool Load AUR, VDB and F3D cache files, preview them and save image sequences. Combined changelog since Phoenix FD 3: New rigid body solver node, interacting with the Liquid Simulator. No mutual interaction between rigid bodies yet New TexUVW channel for fire/smoke and liquid simulations, moving with the fluid and allowing for render-time texture mapping of surfaces and volume color and opacity, as well as for adding displaced detail moving with the fluid in all render modes New Voxel Tuner node allowing to change any grid channel during simulation depending on conditions based on grid channel values, textures or distance to meshes New Particle Tuner node allowing to change any particle channel or delete particles during simulation depending on conditions based on particle channel values Phoenix FD Birth, Sample and Force operators for thinkingParticles New Standalone Previewer tool for AUR, VDB and F3D cache files, much faster than the 3ds Max and Maya viewports and currently showing voxels and a new velocity streamline preview Simulate the RGB channel for Drag particles Register the PRT Reader path into the 3ds Max Asset Tracker for repathing, archiving, and asset transfer for distributed rendering with V-Ray Next New .getFrameInfo MAXScript function that retrieves the currently loaded frame info string Now Phoenix for V-Ray 3 and for V-Ray Next can load in 3ds Max and simulate without V-Ray installed, and can render with Scanline, Corona, Octane, etc. so Phoenix installers for Scanline are no longer needed Ship the Visual C++ redistributable with the Phoenix installer and install it silently in the end, if needed Ability to animate the Phoenix per-node properties Make the Foam Falling Speed vary depending on the bubble sizes Apply the Initial Vel. Rand. option not just to newborn Splash, but to splitting splash particles as well Optimized Birth Volumes Improve the CPU core usage of the Initial Fill Up phase in FLIP simulation Represent all drag particles in the scene using the keyword "Drag" in the Clear Channels field and Affect fields of forces Emit from instanced thinkingParticles meshes when Prt Shape is set to Use Particle Shape Emit from thinkingParticles meshes which are different per each particle when Prt Shape is set to Use Particle Shape Read Data Channels from thinkingParticles using the Particle Texture Optimized rendering of tens or hundreds of Simulators in Volumetric render mode Renamed 'Fade Out' to 'Border Fade' and changed it from voxels to world units Speed up and improve CPU utilization for Optimizing Particle Congestion with large cache files Copy-paste support for render gradients and curves Sped up Grid RGB channel saving to compressed AUR cache files up to 8 times Save and load Grid Viscosity from VDBs created by Phoenix Sped up loading of VDB caches by reading their min-max channel ranges from metadata instead of calculating them Added cache info to VDB caches describing which version of Phoenix FD was used during simulation Hidden script option to disable the preset popup when loading Field3D or OpenVDB caches - inDontOfferPresets Sped up export of PRT files up to 5 times Allowed use of # in the PRT Reader for specifying sequences just like cache paths in the Simulator work Option to color the particle preview according not just to Speed, but to Age, Size and Viscosity as well Better viewport performance with many particle systems in a single Simulator Don't reset the preview Detail Reduction on loading a new cache sequence in 3ds Max Option to save images from the classic GPU Preview at the render resolution Multithreaded the data gathering pre-process of the GPU Preview GPU Preview for smoke in the Standalone Preview Added new toolbar icons for the Phoenix nodes Display the total number of particles in the Cache File Content list in the Simulation rollout Enabled Motion Velocity in Sources by default for new scenes Changed Mapper's Initializer option to off by default for new scenes Renamed "Use Light Cache" to "Volume Light Cache" so it's not confused with V-Ray's Light Cache Added new toolbar icons for the Phoenix nodes Renamed aura_ver.h to phoenix_ver.h, and aurinterface.h to phx_cache_interface.h Removed grid and particle channel defines from phx_cache_interface.h, and renamed GridChannels::ChU/V/W to ChRed/Green/Blue, and ParticleChannels::ChR to ChSize in phx_cache_interface.h Removed the frameTime2contentTime() member of PhoenixSimInterface. Now only PhoenixFrameDataInterface::frameTime2contentTime() should be used Dropped support for 3ds Max 2014 Hang during simulation if interacting with geometries with zero-area triangles Random hang when stopping a fire/smoke simulation affected by a force and starting it again Some voxels lose velocity and freeze using Massive Vorticity Exporting Viscosity channel affected the simulation even when the Viscosity was set to 0 Some FLIP particles could have a slightly negative Age when born from Surface Force sources The FLIP simulation took increasingly longer time and was quick again after restore Creating Discharge Modifiers or changing their curves did not support undo/redo Crash with caches over 2.1 billion voxels with Phoenix Light Cache, since Phoenix FD 3.12 Wrong render of a frame different than the current timeline frame with enabled GPU Preview Crash on render stop with Particle Shader and Liquid simulator using the same geometry as render Cutter and Motion Blur enabled Crash during distributed rendering with Particle Shader using Backburner, since Phoenix FD 3.14 Reflections of excluded area lights still showed up on a Particle Shader's Bubbles/Splashes Crash when rendering many overlapped particles, since Phoenix FD 3.14 Memory leak with render elements enabled in Volumetric mode The Simulator's Velocity Render Element was not rendered in some frames in any of the Mesh modes with Render Cutter Black triangles near the container border with motion blur in Mesh Mode Crash with high Ocean Subdivs and Mesh Smoothing with enabled Use Liquid Particles Mesh mode with a 2D scalar Displacement map rendered with artifacts Enabling the Underwater Goggles option had no effect since Phoenix FD 3.12 Orthographic viewport did not render Ocean Mesh correctly with Phoenix for Scanline Simulating the Fire/Smoke Temperature channel to VDB incorrectly showed the minimum data range as 0, instead of 300 Drag particles exported to VDB could not render with motion blur even with exported grid velocity Differences in velocity length between AUR and VDB caches of the same simulation exported from Phoenix The Export PRT Particles dialog exported the entire simulation cache range instead of the Timeline range when the Timeline checkbox is enabled Jittering Preview with Detail reduction and Adaptive grid Voxels and velocities in the voxel preview of a rotated simulator were not billboarded towards the camera Simulations with particles sometimes show the frames from the previous run in the viewport Crash when simulating using a Body Force node without an object, since Phoenix FD 3.13 Modifier-Based Space Warps over a Spline caused the Path Follow force to work incorrectly Mapper's Initializer option was not working with Liquid simulators Using a Grid Texture without a Simulator as displacement rendered slower than using a Grid Texture with a Simulator Grid Texture applied to thinkingParticles did not get updated correctly when rendering a sequence Crash when selecting a thinkingParticles system with the Particle Texture Crash when simulating using a Mapper with a Particle Texture, while the same Particle Texture was also used in a material Fixed differences between 3ds Max and Maya's Phoenix oceans Displaced Cap Mesh using Ocean Texture was offset from the Simulator box if using offset for the Ocean Texture Opening a scene containing Phoenix Ocean Texture connected a VRayDisplacementMod prompted for adjusting the settings of the texture Wrong Mapping of the Foam Texture when the Ocean texture used tiling other than 1.0 in World XYZ with 'Use the original non-displaced vertices' Crash when simulating with Cascade Simulator enabled but no Simulator chosen Adding an X-Ref Scene or X-Ref Object broke the Output path of existing Simulators in the current scene if it contained a macro The message asking for creating a Particle Shader popped up again after disabling Foam/Splash and enabling them again Merging a Simulator from a scene with different scale changed its grid resolution Simulation remaining time was wrong after pausing or restoring Empty grids filled with density using the opacity curve rendered with different density between 3ds Max and exporting to VRscene Complete changelog since Phoenix FD 3.99.00 Beta: Ability to animate the Phoenix per-node properties Set the original objects' visibility of the Active Bodies to Bounding Box Do not inherit the positions of Active Body originals in the hierarchy, so animated Active Bodies won't move faster than the originals Represent all drag particles in the scene using the keyword "Drag" in the Clear Channels field and Affect fields of forces Make the Foam Falling Speed vary depending on the bubble sizes Improve the CPU core usage of the Initial Fill Up phase in FLIP simulation Emit TexUVW from emitters with mapped textures, and emit changing TexUVW values over time from Sources Now the Particle Tuner can affect the particle scalar speed and the separate X/Y/Z components of the particle velocity, as well as the R/G/B components of the particle RGB Value expression items can now read the particle scalar Speed channel, as well as the Velocity along X, Y and Z Now the Voxel Tuner can affect the separate X/Y/Z components of the voxel velocity, as well as the R/G/B components of the voxel RGB Renamed 'Fade Out' to 'Border Fade' and changed it from voxels to world units Ship the Visual C++ redistributable with the Phoenix installer and install it silently in the end, if needed Read Data Channels from thinkingParticles using the Particle Texture Option to color the particle preview according not just to Speed, but to Age, Size and Viscosity as well Better viewport performance with many particle systems in a single Simulator Option to save images from the classic GPU Preview at the render resolution Multithreaded the data gathering pre-process of the GPU Preview GPU Preview for smoke in the Standalone Preview Option to change the background color Display the total number of particles in the Cache File Content list in the Simulation rollout Renamed Active Bodies Solver "Auto-create dummies" option to "Auto-Create Center of Mass Gizmo" Added new toolbar icons for the Phoenix nodes Renamed aurinterface.h to phx_cache_interface.h Renamed GridChannels::ChU/V/W to ChRed/Green/Blue, and ParticleChannels::ChR to ChSize in phx_cache_interface.h Removed the frameTime2contentTime() member of PhoenixSimInterface. Now only PhoenixFrameDataInterface::frameTime2contentTime() should be used Some installations of Phoenix could not load in 3ds Max Exporting Viscosity channel affected the simulation even when the Viscosity was set to 0 Some FLIP particles could have a slightly negative Age when born from Surface Force sources The FLIP simulation took increasingly longer time and was quick again after restore Active Bodies could not work in Include list mode of the Simulator 'Create Center of Mass' button worked on any type of nodes, including the Active Body solver itself or the already created centers of mass Active Bodies with Ground Elasticity set to 1 were accelerating during rotation Friction with the Fluid parameter causes unstable behavior of Active Bodies Active Bodies were not moving correctly with Phoenix simulator linked to an animated object Active Bodies affected the Phoenix simulation even when disabled from the Dynamics roll-out Wrong render of a frame different than the current timeline frame with enabled GPU Preview Crash during distributed rendering with Particle Shader using Backburner, since Phoenix FD 3.14 Crash on render stop with Particle Shader and Liquid simulator using the same geometry as render Cutter and Motion Blur enabled Crash when rendering many overlapped particles, since Phoenix FD 3.14 Memory leak with render elements enabled in Volumetric mode Possible crash when Tex UVW Interpolation Step is set to 0 Crash if switching a Value expression to Distance To during simulation Texture maps created from the Expression Edit window were not immediately shown in the Material Editor if it was already open Clicking the navigation button that should select the second expression item child, selected the first one instead The voxel tuner could not affect the scalar Speed using the Buildup Time option Black triangles near the container border with motion blur in Mesh Mode Crash with high Ocean Subdivs and Mesh Smoothing with enabled Use Liquid Particles TP Force Operator with Affect Orientation enabled scaled particles incorrectly Crash when creating Thinking Particles using Phoenix Birth operator referencing an empty particle system Using a Grid Texture without a Simulator as displacement rendered slower than using a Grid Texture with a Simulator Crash when selecting a thinkingParticles system with the Particle Texture Fixed differences between 3ds Max and Maya's Phoenix oceans Displaced Cap Mesh using Ocean Texture was offset from the Simulator box if using offset for the Ocean Texture Opening a scene containing Phoenix Ocean Texture connected a VRayDisplacementMod prompted for adjusting the settings of the texture Changing the Timeline frame did reset the Flip YZ orientation of the cache Vector velocity preview was not correctly billboarded Voxels and velocities in the voxel preview of a rotated simulator were not billboarded towards the camera Simulations with particles sometimes show the frames from the previous run in the viewport Differences in velocity length between AUR and VDB caches of the same simulation exported from Phoenix The Export PRT Particles dialog exported the entire simulation cache range instead of the Timeline range when the Timeline checkbox is enabled The message asking for creating a Particle Shader popped up again after disabling Foam/Splash and enabling them again Merging a Simulator from a scene with different scale changed its grid resolution Simulation remaining time was wrong after pausing or restoring