With Phoenix FD 3.13 we have focused on adding many frequently requested features, improving usability and support for 3ds Max 2020.
Faster liquid simulations
FLIP simulations are 30% faster on average and up to 2x faster on some scenes.
Fire Opacity Texture
Now you can modify the Fire Opacity using textures in order to achieve more interesting shading results.
Support for Loading and Saving OpenVDB Point Data
Save particles simulated by Phoenix FD to VDB cache files, and also import particles from other software via VDB caches
Complete changelog:
NEW PHOENIX FD Support for 3ds Max 2020
NEW VOLUMETRIC SHADER Modulate or replace the Fire Opacity with a Texture in 'Use Own Opacity' mode
NEW CACHE I/O Saving of Phoenix simulated particles to OpenVDB caches
NEW CACHE I/O Loading of OpenVDB point data for rendering using the Particle Shader or emitting from Sources
IMPROVED SIMULATION Option to allow only expansion of the adaptive grid, but disable shrinking for the Liquid Simulator
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Resimulation of the RGB channel for FLIP particles
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Export of Particle Velocity for WetMap over moving geometries
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Use less memory for simulation of WetMap when 'Sticky Liquid' is disabled
IMPROVED ANIMATION Grid RGB and Viscosity channels are now reconstructed from FLIP particles when using Time Bend Controls, preventing render flickering
IMPROVED VOLUMETRIC SHADER Optimized volumetric rendering when Smoke Opacity is modulated by a texture
IMPROVED PARTICLE SHADER Motion Blur Interval Center support for the Particle Shader
IMPROVED PARTICLE SHADER Name new Particle Shaders "ParticleShader###" instead of "PHXFoam###"
IMPROVED OCEAN MESHER Support for rendering Ocean Mesh from multiple cameras via Batch Render
IMPROVED OCEAN MESHER Support for rendering Ocean Mesh with Stereoscopic camera
IMPROVED PREVIEW Show the force preview in the box of the loaded cache, if any, and in the simulation box otherwise
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Updated OpenVDB from version 3 to version 5
IMPROVED ABC I/O Export Phoenix meshes with vertex velocity using 3ds Max 2019+'s built-in Alembic export into the 'Max_Map_Channel velocity' color set. Used for motion blur rendering with V-Ray Next update 1.1 or newer
IMPROVED ABC I/O Separate export to Alembic for the different particle systems of a Simulator by exporting the "Particles [] of []" nodes via 3ds Max's built-in exporter
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Added the running Simulator's node name to the simulation viewport status
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Renamed the Mapper's 'Time Constant' to 'Buildup Time'
FIXED V-RAY SUPPORT The Phoenix FD 3ds Max plugin could not load together with V-Ray builds older than V-Ray 3.6. Restored compatibility with V-Ray 3.1
FIXED GRID SOLVER Intersecting a moving obstacle with a Solid emitter left non-emitting voxels after the obstacle
FIXED GRID SOLVER Clear Inside did not clear the volume of Non-Solid emitters in Surface Force mode in the Fire/Smoke Simulator
FIXED GRID SOLVER Empty adaptive grid expanded by itself when Extra Margin was used and Expand and Don't Shrink was On
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Crash with 'Simulate Air Effects' and forces affecting the 'Air' system of a Liquid Simulator, since Phoenix FD 3.04
FIXED FLIP SOLVER WetMap was not equally generated over flat surfaces and might not appear on horizontal or vertical surfaces
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Subsiding liquid at the front of a long moving ocean container with Motion Inertia
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Fixed various issues with moving ocean containers producing disturbances and waves at their borders
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Trying to resimulate over a liquid cache with no Liquid particles showed different messages the first and second time
FIXED SIMULATION GENERAL Simulation restore did not go back to the last backup frame and could cause a crash, since Phoenix FD 3.12
FIXED SCENE BODY INTERACTION Voxelization of a large amount of small bodies used excessive amounts of memory, since Phoenix FD 3.11
FIXED SCENE BODY INTERACTION Voxelization of hundreds of geometries with very small sizes was slower on many threads compared to simulating on 1 thread
FIXED SOURCES Geometry with Initial Liquid Fill which was also selected in a Source in Volume Brush or Volume Inject mode created double amount of liquid particles and this caused explosions
FIXED SOURCES Particles with small size used as emitters for Liquid had random Discharge strength
FIXED SOURCES Sources did not emit from Thinking Particles when simulating through Deadline or Backburner
FIXED ANIMATION Flickering FLIP liquid mesh near emitters when Input Play Speed was below 1
FIXED GPU VOLUMETRICS When two or more Simulators had any overlapping walls, volumetrics weren't rendered correctly with V-Ray GPU
FIXED GPU VOLUMETRICS Crash with instanced Simulators in Volumetric Render Mode during sequence render with V-Ray GPU [requires V-Ray Next update 1.1 or newer]
FIXED GPU VOLUMETRICS Crash when rendering a scene containing any Particle Shaders with V-Ray GPU
FIXED GPU VOLUMETRICS Crash when rendering a scene containing a VolumeGrid and a Simulator with V-Ray GPU
FIXED GPU VOLUMETRICS Shading volumes using only textures still required a loaded cache file with V-Ray GPU
FIXED GPU VOLUMETRICS Volumes loaded from OpenVDB caches that contain internal rotation rendered clipped with V-Ray GPU
FIXED VOLUMETRIC ILLUMINATION Fire Lights kept illuminating the scene after the cache sequence ended during sequence render
FIXED VOLUMETRIC ILLUMINATION Crash when rendering a volume with Create Lights intersecting a geometry with a Light Material
FIXED VOLUMETRIC SHADER Using many chained texture maps in the volumetric shader produced different renders of the same frame when rendering repeatedly
FIXED VOLUMETRIC SHADER Volumetric Light Cache still consumed additional memory even when it should have been disabled in Progressive V-Ray rendering
FIXED VOLUMETRIC SHADER Memory leak when rendering with GI and any V-Ray render elements
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Particle Shader particles appeared smaller when exported and rendered from a VRScene
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Crash when rendering a Particle Shader without a linked Liquid Simulator, since Phoenix FD 3.12
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Slowdown of Particle Shader Bubble/Splash/Cellular rendering with linked Liquid Simulator and 'Use Light Cache', introduced in Phoenix FD 3.04
FIXED PARTICLE NODES Slowdown the second time you rendered a large amount of Foam particles
FIXED OCEAN MESHER Ocean Mesh used excessive amounts of memory when rendered with Spherical Panorama camera
FIXED OCEAN MESHER Ocean Mesh was not built correctly when the viewport was set to Orthographic mode
FIXED OCEAN MESHER Crash when rendering Ocean mesh with Cutter Geom and Motion Blur
FIXED OCEAN MESHER Missing mesh polygons on the container border when rendering in Ocean Mesh mode
FIXED OCEAN MESHER Flipped mesh polygons on the container border when rendering in Ocean Mesh mode with Mesh Smoothness above 0
FIXED GRID TEXTURE Crash if creating a circular dependency between a Grid Texture and a Simulator's displacement, when 'Skip the Displacement' was off
FIXED GRID TEXTURE Crash during fire/smoke simulation if using a Grid Texture reading the Temperature of the same Simulator in a Mapper affecting Temperature with 'Initializer' Off
FIXED GRID TEXTURE Crash when rendering a scene with Grid Texture used as a mask in a Blend material with Motion Blur
FIXED GRID TEXTURE VRayVolumeGrid could be selected as a Phoenix Grid texture Source Node
FIXED WAVE FORCE Boiling effect on the open grid borders when using Wave Force with Fillup for Ocean and there was geometry over the bottom
FIXED PREVIEW Voxel preview of temperature around 200 Kelvins with As Fire enabled displayed bright red and pink voxels
FIXED PREVIEW Preview Auto reduction did not work for the Force preview
FIXED PREVIEW Constant mesh rebuild in 3ds Max viewport when the timeline start was not an exact frame
FIXED PREVIEW When render viewport was locked, Ocean Mesh preview was drawn from that perspective in any viewport
FIXED CACHE I/O Min-max channel range of AUR caches randomly displayed very large numbers
FIXED PRT I/O Crash when repeatedly pressing Export PRT particles
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Forward scrolling the timeline slider while simulating and looking at the Simulation rollout hung the simulation
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Selecting 'Don't show again' on dialogues caused some messages to not appear at all even on the first run
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION The warning about DR and local paths still appeared even after all Simulators were deleted from the scene
FIXED INSTALLER The installer for V-Ray 3 placed vray_phoenix.dll into '3dsmax XXXX for x64/bin/plugins' instead of 'RT for 3ds Max XXXX for x64/bin/plugins'