Big Feature Request and bug list!!!

[Jordan]

Well, you asked for it Kresimir!!
I asked around the FX guys here and compiled a list of bugs and feature requests...
Considering there are about 15 or so of us and have been working 90% in fume for the last 6 months on about 500+ close up fire/smoke shots the list isnt that big but I think has a lot of good stuff on there:
Feel free to tell me if there are already solutions to stuff on here or if you need further explanation.

UI Wishlist
General:
1: Ability to pin the UI while not simming with multiple grid's UI open)
2: Maxscript access to everything
3: Ability to save/load presets from any directory, maybe keep the current setup as a Quick Preset Load/Save option
4: Even with maxscript it is pretty clumsy working with sims that involve multiple grids. It would be great to have either a) variable resolution grids, or b) a master object to control multiple grids.
Simulation Tab:
5: Allowing Vorticity to be set to higher that 1
6: a thumbnail representation of the turbulence which is created like in AB (Similar to the turbulence viewport display but in swatch form)
Src/Obj Tab:
7: A "select object" button (next to the "Pick Object"+ "Remove Object" buttons) to select the object/s highlighted in the list in the scene
8: the "use" tick box in the objects panel, doesn't work on multiple selections
9:On multi-select of Objects in the Obj/Src tab access to the object properties.
10: Display of space warps UI in the Obj/Src tab when selected
11: objects list box, doesn't scale when there is alot of objects in it.....becomes cumbersome to use with more then 10 objects/sources/spacewarps in the list.
Sources:
12: Allowing Turbulence to be set to higher that 1

Preview Window Wishlist
13: The ability to preview Lighting/Shadows and Multiscattering either in the preview window or in viewport like in Maya/Houdini.
14: Ability to preview to frames rather than an AVI
15: The Play preview function dosent open the AVI in the program ascociated with AVI's if it has been changed (eg default changed from WMP to MPC, still opens in MMP)
16: Change the way the Preview window get resized so it doesnt always stay 3:4 when you drag diagonally

Source Wishlist
General:
17: Multiple map channels on sources. Remove the "Map Channel" spinner and use the mapping set in the map/s (Explicit, World XYZ and Local XYZ support too)
18: maps for velocity in ALL sources, currently only object sources have this feature.
Particle Source:
19: Ship the After Burn Pflow node with FumeFX or allow event based selection within the Particle Source
20: Particle Source Turbulence Parameters like in the object/simple sources.
21: Radial velocity for particles.
22: spherical mapping per particle for all channels

Simulation Wishlist
General:
23: The ability to color/shade (fire and smoke) separately per emitter in the container, ie blue smoke off of one source, and purple of another...
24: a better/different Turbulence algorithm you can see the pattern, decreasing realism of the fume.
25: Ability to set Temperature Expantion or Expantion on Fuel burn rather than just Fuel Expansion
26: Also, nothing new here, but it would be awesome if low-res sims could better approximate their high-res counterparts. It seems when you up-rez a grid there are certain properties you need to adjust to reproduce a similar result (ie. increase vorticity, decrease advection stride, etc.). Perhaps there could be an optional setting in Fume that would enable internal "hack values" that would attempt to approximate simulation outcomes across multiple resolutions.
FDXs:
27: optimized cache size's... ie saving extra channel data is bloated, extra detail, i'm looking at you Perhaps compression?

Rendering Wishlist
28: Multiple Scatter from one fumeFX grid to another
29: Render IDs per grid combined with a multimatte style render element (Similar style to Final Render's "fR Object-Material ID" Render element, see attachment) where you can select one or multiple IDs per colour channel (RGB)
30: worldspace/ local space position render element for fumefx
31: It would be extremely useful to have a Render Void object, like in AfterBurn, where you can choose which part of the sim to exclude from render, with adjustable falloff.

Documentation Wishlist
32: Better documentation on network submission.
33: Updated documentation on the current fumefx features exposed to maxscript.

Other Wishlist
34: a faster way to advect particles through low resolution container in Pflow/TP, atm its choppy, unstable, and interpolates badly.
35: A way for FumFX to communicate with the Deadline Lightining plugin when network simming via a deadline maxscript job.
36: A way for FumeFX to create lights (Like it does with multi scattering ) that can be used as direct lights in Vray/Final Render to get better/quicker lighting solution than relying on GI.


Bugs
37: Loading preset while simulating crashes max instantly
38: Curve Editor and gradients, randomly stop allowing flags/knobs being created.
39: Preset path breaks and doesn't displays and presets save, Randomly though, you can hit esc in the maxscript listener spits an error and the path becomes available again
40: Large Cache Files, (2gb per frame and above) stop the preview window working correctly, it holds a frame, and never progress's
41: Setting extra velocity in simple sources to above 50cm, can cause the velocity NOT to be calculated.
42: A more reliable cancel button.... it freezes max 1 out of 10 times, forcing a forced exit.
43: Perhaps some Windows 7 compatibility issues related to white windows and cycling windows.

[Jordan]

couple more:

44: One more I thought of was building in the fume grid's movement (eg, if animated to track an object) influence on the sim as a slider or pos/rot % slider. So when it's set to 0% it works like a linked/aligned grid with no visible influence on the sim, but maybe you could till keep the buoyance and gravity directions controlable seperately so the smoke still rises correctly etc.

45: if you select knobs within an AFC curve and move them left and right, they scale apart. This doesnt include the knobs at 0 and 1.

46: When you have a large mesh as a deflector (think Ground Plane) or a particle system that extends much further than the grid fumeFX calculates voxels for the whole mesh then culls it to fit in the grid. This can cause huge memory use to calculate the voxels. It would seem more efficient to cull the geometry then voxelize it. Currently we do FFD hacks on the geo to keep it small without changing the topology to preserve velocities.

[jrand]

LOL, i missed this earlier, there are some real good suggestions in there. I think that could keep the boys busy for a while!

[Jordan]

forgot another one:
47: You can't combine Void Srcs that are inverted (ie. they negate each other). It would be great if inverted Void sources worked additively, so that voxels are only erased if they exist outside all of the void gizmos.

[Galagast]

..wishing there was a "like" button for this thread

[Jordan]

48: 32bit Velocity Render Element

[sitnisati]

Hi Jordan,

Thanks for this great feature and bug list.
Will do my best to make features that are close to our dev plan to be done.

Kresimir

[Jordan]

Thanks Kresimir!

Another!
49: Motion Blur issues.... Full 3D motion blur supported in Vray (our fume renderer of choice) and Final Render would be awesome! A big issue we are having at the moment is that the camera motion blur dose not respect the movement of the grid itself. A lot of our sims involve a grid attached to moving geo and the fumeFX grids dont get motion blurred the same as the geo (even though the grid is moving it is rendered as if it was still). Similarly if we have a large grid with a fire moving through the grid and the camera tracking the fire we find the fire is blurred way to much because the fire in the static grid dosent know its moving at the same rate as the camera, it thinks it is still.

[Jordan]

50: the .FireThreshold property on the fume grid seems to be duplicated between a wavelet parameter and a shader parameter.

[jstrob2]

Very good list. I would add something I didn't see:

I would like the fumeFX path to appear in the 3dsmax manage/asset tracking dialog. That way we could change all the file paths at the same place.

[nickw]

I would like to add something as well,

To be able to zoom in the AFC Curves like max's native curves editor

[jstrob2]

I would like to add something as well,

To be able to zoom in the AFC Curves like max's native curves editor

Good one!!! I have a 24 inches monitor but it still not big enough to adjust the curve in the small corner comfortably.

[gakkie]

I'd like to add some stuffs, too!!
(Ideas are almost came from MayaFluid though...)

53:Non-dynamic mode(Volumetric Texture driven Mode) like Maya Fluid's Volumetric Cloud.
It would be awesome if we can use 3dMax's 3dTextures,too.
(I feel it's a bit inconvinient to make fogFX using FumeFX compare to MayaFluid...)

54:Non-Dynamic mode to Simulation.
Now you can toggle 53's non-dynamic mode to simulation mode.(possible?)
ie.Using 53's feature to "Bake Fluid" then you can use that to start simulation!!
Furthermore, it would be great if simulation reacts only Velocity affected area, other area is driven by animated texture.

55:X,Y,Z,Center Gradient, camera, specified object for "Opacity falloff"
FumeFX have only 2 falloff options.Sometimes I need falloff only +Z, camera position(for stereoscopic).

56:X,Y,Z,Center Gradient, camera, "Colour Gradient Option" also if you can choose "normal" and "additional(like fire calculates)" option, too.

57:wavelet turbulent without having wavelet turbulent cache...(possible??)
There's SOuP plugin for maya and which does not need to create cache for wavelet turbulent.

Those ideas are basically came from Maya Fluid...
If these are added, I guess more Maya users will be familier with FumeFX

gakkie

[sitnisati]

Thanks for sharing your wishlist !
Yes, WT without the need to have Default cache would be possible and will think about it.
As for with #53, not sure if that would be used. Since you an achieve much better static results with AfterBurn.

Kresimir

[Mr.Blank]

I like all the features requested here but particulary the inconsistency between low and High res. Sims is very annoying.

[finalight]

Amen to the features list - great comprehensive suggestions for an already awesome plugin ;]

[mikeguy3086]

I scoured this thread but didn't see any mention of a normal pass. More and more I'm getting requests for just a normals pass when I'm just simming smoke.

Currently we have to do the RGB light trick(a red, green, and blue light in the correct position). The thing I hate about this, is that it requires a separate render if they also want the standard render. Plus, it's extra time.

The thing is that I could use a PRT Fume Source, choose my fume grid, open up Magma, then plug in normals to the color channel and see Instant viewable normals.

[rconover]

Deep compositing support.
When you have multiple, overlapping fume grids and you want one effect to look
nested 'inside' another or 'impailed' by another the only easy option is to render all those grids all in one pass.
But this can have other other limitations.

Deep compositing channels provide a more flexible alternative to control all this in the comp. Its becoming and industry standard.

[NormanStansfield]

More features that make new Fume fx catch on with a surprise which Phoenix fd 3.0 already is:

1. Amazing viewport preview with almost no difference to final render. Tested It by myself.
2. More one - click presets as great starting points. Using presets in fume is slightly old-school.
3. The Preview window from Fume has more than 10 years and still, integration with scene is a guesswork, gpu and cpu previews are so different from each other and from final render as well.

4. even faster optimization like "UCG" ultra cojagulate gradient, even at the cost of realism. There are lots of scientific papers on new realtime smoke/liquid methods, which is really fast for previews, while still being amazingly useful in production. I can provide these papers if needed.
5. Removing flicker situations, absent in phoenix fd 3.0
6. Removing interface slow-down after using Particle Source with preview circles turned on - actually it is a bug, I presume.

Phoenix 3.0 sets a bar pretty high right now. I don't know how big sitni sati is - is this a Kristo only? Then its hard to compete with Chaos Group. But if you have more people, I dont see any problems to implement 21st century' features.

All the best

[sitnisati]

Hello,

Thank you for the wishlist - we appreaciate it.
We are constantly working on FumeFX improvements and PhoenixFD has never been a real competitor.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec