Phoenix FD 2.0 - how is it burning?

#1

Hi everybody!
I’m thinking about upgrading Phoenix FD to 2.0, but am a little frustrated about the lack of detailed information or independent reviews about what’s new. Are there core improvements, important bug fixes etc. regarding fire and smoke? Because chaosgroup’s website only talks about liquids, foam, splashes (and particle export and the GPU preview) - none of which I`m really using. Also mentioned are “New and improved shading methods” for smoke, but without anymore detail (especially if they only work for Vray or also in Scanline)
So far I’m only simulating (usually small) fires and smoke using the scanline renderer, so I don’t know if there would be any difference between 1.2 and 2.0 for me.

     I have to do a small-scale, but rather complex smoke simulation (the smoke will have to move around and through quite a lot of geometry) and not really the time to try out the demo. So any advice about whether I shoud start this project with Phoenix 1.2 or 2.0 would be greatly appreciated!
#2

Are there core improvements, important bug fixes etc. regarding fire and smoke?

Yes, there are some new stuffs related to the fire/smoke simulations

  • There is a new simulation method, added on the place of the bidirectional method of conservation. The new (buffered) method is not very strong from scientific point of view, despite its 100% CPU usage, it converges slowly compared to the “smooth” method. But it produces much more fine details, that is very important advantage. Here you can see the difference between them.
  • There is a fix in the core, that was the reason for “breathing” simulation in some cases. This sounds like not “a big deal” but it makes the smoke/fire setup much easier.

Another important feature is the ability to move particles directly in the core. Of course you can use the PF operators to do this in the old versions, but the native Phoenix particles are much faster, you can move >10M particles in few seconds. This gives the ability to render very detailed smoke simulated in low resolution grid.

#3

There is a sample of that in the Tips and Tricks section of the help, here.

-Eric

#4

Thank you very much, Ivaylo & Eric!
Good to know about the new buffered method, nice increase of smoke details!

That other tip about using Phoenix particles to simulate fine smoke sounds very promising, too. But can the PHXFoam component used here be rendered with scanline or is it part of the solid mode (Vray only)?

#5

But can the PHXFoam component used here be rendered with scanline or is it part of the solid mode (Vray only)?

it works with scanline too, no problem for that. actually the fog mode of the foam uses the fire/smoke shader.

#6

Thank you very much again.
I just ordered the upgrade and am looking forward to these improvements!

#7

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