EmberGen 0.5.6.0 has been released!

News & Announcements
1

We’ve just released EmberGen 0.5.6 and to get the update all you have to do is run EmberGen and it’ll prompt you to update the software. You can always download the latest installer from our website and run that if you wish.

Features:

  • Force activity toggle to all force types
  • Force falloff controls for points and line force
  • A separate ‘additional pressure’ parameter added to point and line forces
  • High quality gradient rendering option to the ‘settings’, this reduces harsh banding.
  • vorticity ramp parameter.
  • Gas pressure release, this adds additional pressure and expands the simulation as fuel burns
  • Volume post processing modulation controls
  • Allow smoke, temperature, fuel and flames to be advected at different rates.
  • The color of hot smoke during combustion can be amplified by adding blackbody coloring.
  • Split ‘Advection Method’ into ‘Advection Method’ and ‘Advection Accuracy’
  • Allow skipping BFECC velocity
  • Improved flipbook packing and playback controls
  • The display size of the Preview, Raytracer and Export viewports are now all controlled by a image size parameter in the Camera node.
  • Perpetual license support
  • Allow changing Emitter and Volume parameters when no Simulation node is connected

Improvements:

  • New default preset
  • Raymarching accelerator pass, this should now also work while exporting
  • UI efficiency and responsiveness
  • Make text more clear and consistent
  • Disable the Generate button in export nodes when no Simulation node is connected
  • Accept negative ground distance and clip the rendering accordingly (also for GPU particles)
  • Flipbooks are saveable at any time during the generation process
  • Redesigned license manager
  • Changed default camera reset button from C to G to prevent accidental resets when copying from the node graph

Bugfixes:

  • Repeat Simulation and Loop Timeline are no longer linked to Loop Simulation bounds
  • Fixed a zero position offset bug
  • Fixed Bloom and Scattering
  • Fixed Show Temperature when upscaling
  • Fixed alpha blending
  • Additional pressure now works correctly after resizing
  • Temperature at the boundary is now set to ambient temperature instead of zero
  • Correctly handle upper and lower looping bounds

Known issues:

  • Shaders can take a long time to compile the first time it opens
  • Trying to close EmberGen while it’s exporting might freeze.
  • There’s a bug in Preview mode while running the simulation where the UI gets very unresponsive even while the simulation is paused, try going to the Raytracer mode and back to Preview to improve the UI responsiveness.
  • The simulation and rendering might freeze if left running for a very long time. The only way to fix it is to restart.
2

Looks great! Any advice on how to port projects over from the previous version (0.5.5.2)?

I had a sim (Combustion mode) that was using the Kutta Third Order advection method and it looks quite different after updating as this option isn’t available anymore. Semi Lagrangian advection with Second Order advection accuracy is almost the same, is there anything else I can try?

I understand we shouldn’t be relying on a beta for projects but it would be great if there was some backwards compatibility in terms of projects saved in the last available version.

3

We had to consolidate the advection methods and I believe the software tries to choose the most relevant advection method based on what the old preset was using. You can try out the different options and pick the one that works the best, or I can send you a 0.5.5.2 exe.

I will tell you now that EmberGen 0.7.5.0 will not accept any old presets, period, so do keep that in mind. Just far too many changes coming up that we don’t want to hinder ourselves with.

4

Ah Ok. I made a backup of 0.5.5.2 just in case and its nice that there aren’t any issues having two different versions on one system. Any tips on producing the behaviour of Kutta Third Order by adjusting settings of other parameters anywhere in the node network? Fourth order seems really intense and certain sims produce almost nothing when switched to second order.

Seems a shame if the reduction of advection options actually means certain sims can’t be produced now…

Good to know about presets in 0.7.5.