Chaos Group is issuing a call for beta testers for the latest version of its Phoenix fluid dynamics plugin. Current owners of V-Ray or Phoenix FD for Max are eligible. New features in Phoenix FD 2.0 include:
– Foam / splashes particle shader – with phoenix FD 2.0 you can now enchase your liquid simulations with stunning visuals of foams and splashes
– Lighting and diffuse color shading in the GPU preview – the GPU preview feature of Phoenix FD has been further improved with the capabilities of rendering actual lighting from the flames as well as rending the diffuse part of your simulations
– Proper blending of all the Phoenix atmospheric shaders (sim-sim, sim-foam, foam-foam) – Phoenix FD 2.0 is fully capable of seamlessly blending all of its different atmospheric shaders
– Geometry gizmo for both modes of rendering (atmosphere and solid) – this simple but powerful feature allows the user to render just a part of the simulation that falls within the boundaries of a specified geometry.
Other improvements:
– Flatter liquid surface – internal optimizations allow the simulation of better flat liquid surfaces
– Colored transparency – the transparency parameter can now be used with a color value adding some tint to the standard transparency. This feature is similar to the fog color of the V-Ray material.
– Memory optimizations – the architecture of the volumetric shader is now reorganized to consume less memory. The memory reduction ratio is about two for atmosphere mode and eight for solid mode.
The new version also brings a number of bug fixes. More at Chaos Group.
