Active Bodies collision
Complete control over collisions between Active Bodies using the Bullet solver. Easily create effects such as colliding ice cubes in liquid, floating ocean debris or objects washed away in floods.
Color Absorption
A whole new level of volume rendering effects using Colored Absorption. Achieve more control over smoke shading—change the light’s color as it travels through smoke.
Massive Wave Force
Build highly realistic ocean simulations. Create real-world ocean waves, using the Massive Wave Force feature.
Extended motion blur support on V-Ray GPU
Leverage GPU power to add motion blur to splashes and bubble mode in the Particle Shader.
Faster rendering and simulations
Take advantage of various speed gains on simulation, rendering and previews.
Property Lister window
Quickly access and change the Phoenix properties of each object in your scene—all in one place.
Autodesk 3ds Max 2022 support
Phoenix is now compatible with the latest Autodesk releases.
With Phoenix FD 4.40 we added support for 3ds Max 2022 (note that the GPU preview and velocity streamline preview are disabled temporarily due to changes in the 3ds Max viewports).
We implemented mutual collisions between Active Bodies so now you can create complex rigid body dynamics with Phoenix. In order to aid scenes with many interacting objects, we added a new Property Lister window, allowing you quick access to the per-node properties of the scene nodes.
Simulations of large scale stormy oceans or tunnel waves are now possible with the new Massive Wave Force.
A new colored absorption option allows for more interesting volume rendering effects, and can also be mapped via a texture. We added support for motion blur of Bubbles and Splashes in V-Ray GPU (requires a latest V-Ray 5).
The Phoenix standalone previewer can now be fully controlled via the command line, allowing you to change options and save image sequences of cache files in all different preview modes.
In this version of Phoenix, we multithreaded all remaining parts of the simulation, and also sped up the simulation, previews and rendering significantly.
We improved our toolbar presets, added more options to the cache converter tool, and as always, fixed many issues.
NEW PHOENIX Support for 3ds Max 2022 (GPU preview and velocity streamline preview are temporarily disabled)
NEW ACTIVE BODIES Mutual interaction between Active Bodies, using the Bullet Solver option
NEW SIMULATION GENERAL Phoenix Property Lister window for quickly editing many obstacles or Active Bodies in the scenе
NEW VOLUME SHADER Absorption color for volume rendering which can also be mapped by a texture
NEW VOLUME SHADER Render the Fully Visible Fire Opacity Mode together with the Use Probabilistic Shading option
NEW PARTICLE SHADER Render the Particle Shader in Bubbles/Splashes mode with motion blur on V-Ray GPU, requires V-Ray 5, update 1.2
NEW STANDALONE PREVIEW Command line interface allowing to script image saving using different preview modes and options
NEW WAVE FORCE Massive Wave Force allowing to exactly replicate the Ocean waves, to affect any Phoenix channel, even without Fillup for Ocean, and use any Level Of Detail of the Ocean Texture
NEW 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Option to start a render after each simulation frame is completed - 'Render On Each Sim Frame' in the Simulation rollout, to go together with Cacheless Simulation
IMPROVED SIMULATION GENERAL Sped up low res simulations (below 10 million voxels) with up to 15%
IMPROVED SIMULATION GENERAL Enabled Grid Velocity for all Simulators and presets by default
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Emit pressure from Liquid Sources In Volume Inject mode without emitting liquid
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Allow Birth Volumes to interact with the simulation even if they are hidden
IMPROVED FLIP SOLVER Sped up FLIP simulations with up to 25%
IMPROVED ACTIVE BODIES A new 'Collision Margin' parameter which you can lower in order to keep groups of bodies in contact
IMPROVED SOURCES Affect Motion Velocity of Sources emitting from geometries and particles, using Discharge Modifiers
IMPROVED SOURCES Sped up texture mapped emitters by improving their multithreading
IMPROVED PARTICLE SHADER Sped up frame begin and frame end of the Particle Shader in Bubbles/Splashes/Cellular and Points Mode, especially with huge numbers of particles
IMPROVED OCEAN MESHER Hidden "oceanpriority" option for controlling which is the primary ocean contained when several ones are merged
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Sped up particle compression when writing AUR files. Older Phoenix versions will not be able to read the new AUR files
IMPROVED CACHE I/O Read VDB particle channels named 'point_velocity', 'point_size' and 'point_age'
IMPROVED PRESETS Improved the Gasoline Explosion toolbar Quick Setup preset
IMPROVED PRESETS Improved the Burning Fuel toolbar Quick Setup preset
IMPROVED PREVIEW Sped up viewport performance of many Simulator copies
IMPROVED STANDALONE PREVIEW Options for specifying the resolution of the saved images
IMPROVED STANDALONE PREVIEW Option for enabling orthographic projection
IMPROVED CACHE CONVERTER -exportchannels option allowing you to write only specific channels to the output cache files
IMPROVED CACHE CONVERTER -removegridch and -removeprt options allowing stripping of grid and particle channels from the cache files
IMPROVED SCRIPTING Allowed adding, removing and getting the Phoenix Node Properties on an object via MaxScript - new phxAddNodeProps, phxRemoveNodeProps, and phxGetNodeProps functions
IMPROVED SCRIPTING Equalized all MaxScript names for the Phoenix Node Properties options with the names in Maya
IMPROVED SCRIPTING New IPhoenix interface, with getVersionString(), getTargetString() and getCopyrightsString() methods
IMPROVED TOOLBAR Delete caches from the Phoenix toolbar without a selected Simulator
IMPROVED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Allowed animating all float and world unit Simulator options
IMPROVED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Allowed animating of the Solid, Wetting and Voxel Mode Override node properties
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Added a new 'Credits and Copyrights' window, accessible via the 'Phoenix FD' menu
IMPROVED USER INTERFACE Moved the 'Preferences' and 'About' dialog from the Simulator to the 'Phoenix FD' menu
REMOVED PHOENIX Dropped support for 3ds Max 2016 and 2017
REMOVED USER INTERFACE Hidden the Particle TexUVW export option from the Output rollout
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Emitting Foam/Splash from rigged geometry via a Source in Surface Force mode with Motion Velocity did not set the initial velocity of the particles
FIXED FLIP SOLVER The Foam Birth Volume did not prevent foam to be born by the Splash's Foam On Hit
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Lower Sticky Liquid multiplier values in scenes with overall low Sticky strength resulted in stronger Sticky interaction
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Foam and Splash particles could be born by a Source one voxel further outside the grid's positive sides
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Liquid Particles flew to infinity when animated Time Scale reached value of 0
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Using Foam Patterns caused some foam particles to get stuck at the liquid surface near geometries
FIXED FLIP SOLVER Liquid was creeping up the walls of Confine Geometry, and Liquid and Foam particles sometimes got shot away on collision with Confine Geometry
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES If an Active Body was made See-Through, starting the simulation created a clone with See-Through OFF
FIXED ACTIVE BODIES The Active Bodies Ground plane elasticity affected the elasticity of the collision objects as well
FIXED CACHELESS SIMULATIONS Sometimes more than 1 frame remained in RAM
FIXED CACHELESS SIMULATIONS The Grid RGB channel was not visible in Cacheless frames
FIXED SOURCES Turning off Phoenix Source's Motion Velocity checkbox did not disable the velocity effect in Surface Force mode
FIXED VOLUME SHADER Volumes were not affected by the V-Ray GI engine multipliers
FIXED VOLUME SHADER Setting the Self-Shadowing of the Fire lights to None fell back to the Ray-Traced mode using V-Ray, since Phoenix 3.13
FIXED VOLUME SHADER Rare random crash or memory leak when starting and stopping V-Ray GPU rendering
FIXED VOLUME SHADER Wrong sampling of smoke opacity maps by the Volume Shader when TexUVW was enabled
FIXED VOLUME SHADER Volumetrics which used any texture maps rendered slowly and did't utilize the CPU fully with Corona 6
FIXED VOLUMETRIC ILLUMINATION Fire Lights were visible in surfaces with Reflection Glossiness below 1
FIXED VOLUMETRIC ILLUMINATION Create Lights Even If Not Renderable created the lights in the wrong positions with V-Ray 5
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Incorrect motion blur rendering particles in Bubbles/Splashes/Cellular Mode from a Simulator, moving together with an animated camera
FIXED PARTICLE SHADER Disable Liquid Shadows was not working in Points mode with Volume Light Cache enabled, or Bubbles and Cellular mode, since Phoenix 4.10
FIXED V-RAY IPR Crash during IPR of a Particle Shader in Bubbles mode with Render as Geometry ON
FIXED V-RAY IPR Moving the timeline in did not update the Particle Shader when rendering in IPR with V-Ray GPU if the Simulator was hidden
FIXED OCEAN MESHER Rendering in Mesh Mode with Smoothing and Motion Blur enabled lost the smoothed normals
FIXED TEXUVW Crash when simulating TexUVW interpolation with certain Time Scale values
FIXED CACHE I/O Crash when exporting the ID channel of a particle system with more than 536'870'911 particles. Older Phoenix versions will not be able to read the new AUR files
FIXED BODY FORCE Body Force's Spread Speed could create huge velocities if the affected channel had negative values
FIXED WAVE FORCE Lowering the Rate of Change of the Ocean Texture reduced the effect of the Wave Force
FIXED PREVIEW Missing frames in the viewport right after simulation restore
FIXED PREVIEW Crash when previewing particles and simulating the same frame with less particles since Phoenix 4.30
FIXED PREVIEW Auto Reduction didn't raise the Detail Reduction correctly with many Simulators in the scene
FIXED PREVIEW Crash with particle preview of certain numbers of particles with Detail Reduction
FIXED PREVIEW Crash when turning on Velocity Streamlines preview while having Force preview turned on
FIXED PREVIEW Graph Cells did not work when there wasn't a loaded cache
FIXED PRESETS Toolbar Quick Setup presets could be created over the Active Body Solver icon
FIXED GPU PREVIEW GPU preview was stretched and skewed in ortho mode
FIXED GPU PREVIEW Particle System nodes were shown as Simulators in the Classic GPU Preview
FIXED GPU PREVIEW GPU Preview was drawn incorrectly in inactive viewports, when "Active View Only" is deselected
FIXED GRID TEXTURE Grid Texture was not updated correctly when used by multiple Simulators in fire/smoke rendering based on a Texture
FIXED PARTICLE TEXTURE Particle Texture was not working in Corona when Render-time Only was enabled
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Merging a scene with a Simulator named the same as an existing one renamed the caches of the existing Simulator
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Phoenix textures lost any custom names when saved to a scene
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Crash when using a Phoenix Simulator as a particle source for a V-Ray Instancer using V-Ray CPU (the fix requires both latest Phoenix and V-Ray)
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Splashes Foam on Hit Amount was named 'Size Distribution' in Track View
FIXED 3DS MAX INTEGRATION Repeating Undo in the Phoenix MAXScript editor window ultimately erased all the script
FIXED USER INTERFACE Stopping the simulation using Esc/Shift+Esc sometimes worked even when the 3ds Max window was not focused
FIXED USER INTERFACE Aborting a Simulation where the Output cache path didn't exist was not working, since Phoenix 4.30
FIXED SUBMITTER Submitting $(scene_path).vdb from 3ds Max for Backburner simulation wrote AUR caches