[b]Q.[/b] I have a Material Static operator with 100 sub materials. When a particle transitions to events, it seems to get a different map index assignment. Is there a way I can lock the material to that particular particle? My Material Static operator is in the master global event. [b]A.[/b] Material Static operator has a problem with keeping material IDs persistent if it's in the global event. As a work-around, [i]instance[/i] copies of the Material Static operator should be placed in all local events. P.S. More about this issue (as related to Material Frequency operator) can be found here: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=381

[b]Q.[/b] We switched to object motion blur due to image motion blur miscalculating blur direction over long frame durations (the particles would turn into pointed "spears" that did not behave nicely). However it has been causing some serious slowdowns for us. Basically the render 'hangs' for a long time with no visible progress. What's the deal here? [b]A.[/b] Pre-processing of Particle Flow elements for Object Motion Blur is extremely slow due to non-optimal work in these regards of the scanline renderer. It does not matter if Particle Flow systems are enabled or not – pre-processing ignores this information. Therefore, if you need to blur particles, do not use Object Motion Blur with scanline renderer. It is recommended to use either Image Motion Blur, or blurring capabilities of other renderers, for example Mental Ray

[b]Q1.[/b] I have a complex scene with many PFlows, and I've noticed a bug with copying & pasting events within PView. [i]Pasted events are placed in arbitrary positions and not under the mouse cursor.[/i] This problem seems to occur when there are many events inside PView. [b]Q2.[/b] I have a complex Particle Flow and the Particle View refuses to let me organize the events the way I want. When I drag an event to a new location, it snaps back to where it was. Since I can't put the events where I want, I have a disorganized mess with connection lines going everywhere. Where do I turn off all this auto-snapping nonsense? [b]A.[/b] This is a known issue with Particle View, and it happens when you have a lot of PFlow events spreading too wide in Particle View. To resolve this problem, try to delete the far-most events on the right side of Particle View (if the spread is vertical then the far-most events on the bottom part of Particle View). Once you delete these events, the copy/paste/move operations should come back to normal. Try to place the events no farther on the right (or the bottom); occupy more or less square area of the Event Map. Thanks, Oleg B.

[b]Q.[/b] On many occasions the particles work fine when rendered in sequence, but in certain flows they do not work if rendered out of sequence. I would assume that this is why some have had problems with network rendering. So, is this an error with my flow logic or is there perhaps another way to avoid this that I am not seeing? ([i]more details can be found in[/i] [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=263]this topic[/url]) Here's the Particle View schematics: [img]http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/images/20050520/PViewLoops01.png[/img]

[b]Q.[/b] How can I just set cast/receive shadows off in PFlow? In general, how to set up object propeties for PFlow, as for other standard Max objects? [b]A.[/b] [i]/courtesy of Mark Pigott/[/i] The property settings for Particle Flow are very simalar to the way you set up usual Max objects with one important twist..you have sticky (global settings) and local settings... and it should be done in Particle View: [img]http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/images/20050219/PFlowObjectProperties.png[/img] Now, when you first create a particle flow it defaults to receive shadows /send shadows on the very top RENDER event, which also acts as a GLOBAL setting for all the others IF you don't modify the local ones to overide the global settings. So, if you never touched anything and set up as a 6 event Particle Flow, all the events would have the default receive shadows /send shadows attributes. So, now if you right-click on the topmost RENDER settings and load up properties you can disable the shadow casting receive settings for ALL the events in the flow. Another option is to right-click on each of the child events and set the properties on a per-event basis... One trick I use is quite a few of my events are merely tests so they do not require to be rendered or cast shadows or recieve shadows. So, in the events that are merely passing data onwards to the so called display events i remove the display icon as a reminder to turn off render for this event. I go to the global RENDER event, right-click turn on render, and turn off shadow recieve and shadow cast attributes... I then turn off render which propagates these changes all the way dowmstream... I then go to only the events with display set and locally turn on render for only the events i want to render...

Position Object operator can place particles on a reference mesh vertices. However, the particles are placed in random order, and they may end up overlapping each other. To resolve this deficiency, Orbaz produced a modified version of the Position Object operator named 'Position Object+'. You can download it [url=http://www.orbaz.com/support/ParticleActionsPlus.zip]here[/url] (0.5MB). It is free but unsupported. Use 'Vertices All' Location option for the 'a particle per vertex' effect. The old Location option 'Vertices' is renamed to 'Vertices Random'. Oleg B.

[b]Q.[/b] Is there a way to scale particles as they are emitted (like "Grow and Fade" is used to be) ? [b]A.[/b] The Scale operator can be used for that. It does not have the "Grow and Fade" option. However the Scale Factor parameter is animatable. To make particles grow in 30 frames, as they are emitted, do the following: 1. Drag-and-drop a Scale operator into the Event with a Birth operator. 2. Select the Scale operator to open the parameter panel. 3. Change Type to "Absolute". 4. Change Scale Factor value to 0.0% 5. Move time slider to frame 30 and turn On the Auto Key Mode. 6. Change Scale Factor value to 100.0% 7. Change Animation Offset Keying / Sync By to "Particle Age". As a result, particles grow from 0% to 100% in 30 frames as they are born.