Oleg, Are you gonna have the freebies re compiled for max 2010? Fred

[i]I posted this at the Society as well, and thought I would put it here rather than the Box 2 section because this is pretty much "General Discussion". I understand if it gets moved however. [/i] Oleg has asked me to produce a series of tutorials for Box 2. This is a great opportunity for me, but I want it to be a great opportunity for you guys as well. I know that there are not alot of people using Box 2 (or at least not broadcasting it) so this may not yield the results I hoped for, but I am hoping to gain some feedback into what you guys would like to know about Box 2. I have been kind of aimlessly wandering around the plugin for awhile as I find time between projects, but I am wanting to actually sit down and develop this training. With some new hardware and software advancement on my end I am able to free up my main workstation from having to render. That means I will have much more time for projects like this. Anyow, what would you guys like to see? What would you like to learn about Box 2? [quote]NOTE: This is a poll about ONLY Particle Flow Tools Box 2, Box 3 comes later. So please dont request tutorials or concepts for tthe native PFlow system, Box 1 or 3 just yet. I will likely poll the community for those as well if the time comes.[/quote] These are the things that I am looking for from you guys to really make this training great: 1. Concepts: What practical projects would you like to see and learn how to use Box 2 within? ie. Collapsing buildings, swinging lamps, holes being blown in walls, etc. NOTE: These are not compositing and modelling tutorials except where necessary, so the focus is on the dynamics portion of the examples. 2. Theory: What specific operators or troubleshooting issues would you like to see demoed? ie. Basics of the particle skinner, the theory behind Box 2's integration with the original operators, etc. 3. Troubleshooting: What are some common problems that you and many others have faced in working with Box 2 that you think are worthy of a training video to demostrate either work arounds or avoidances? OKAY, that is all I can think of at the moment. This training is up to you guys, because I am an aspiring TD and consequently lack what most of you guys have in the realm of creativity. So give me your problems so I can solve them. - Evan Schaible www.ParticleFlow.net PS: There is no release date set for the training, but once I get rolling those things will be more foreseeable.

Some folks just amaze me - http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=206&t=775395 Nevertheless, since the Orbaz motto is to satisfy the customer any way we can, I created a simple web form to simplify a request for a cracked version of Box#2 - http://www.orbaz.com/request/CrackedBox2/ Enjoy! :) Thanks, Oleg B. P.S. The aforementioned topic on CGTalk forum was removed - since it was about cracked software. Well, we are still going to keep our request form :)

Hi I've just watched the demo movie and have just got my jaw off the floor - truly excellent stuff. I was wondering about using Box 2 with real world forces. Can I set up scenes using real mass and force data etc and expect realistic results? By realistic I mean real world and not Hollywood. This would be good for teaching physics or even engineering simulations etc. Kind Regards Garry Clarke

ive run into the old lockbond problem again -specifically the incorrect behavior one - where any modifications of the operator send particles in random directions and renders it useless. although opening the scene again seems to make the particles behave...it makes it impossible to work/adjust a scene when the operator does this. i fixed it before with a complete/total reinstall and reauthorisation. that hasnt worked this time though. what causes this? im using 1.07 box 1. also, if i want to download the latest version/redownload...where do i do that? as any download seciton only lets be download demos. cheers

Hi! guys .i need a help! during i authorize PF box1,3 ,the authorize window cant connect to the server ... hope somebody can help me to fix it. thank you a lot.[color=darkred][/color][/b]

Is there an update needed to use Box 3 with Max 2010? And, if so, any release timeframe? thanks, Jeff B.

Im using script operators to grab the shape and motion of multiple scene objects, using a mesher to turn the pflow in to an object then point cache-ing the mesher to bake out the whole system. Everything works fine until I try to record the Point Cache. Its like the script operators are not updating during the point cacheing. How can I force it to update? I attached an example file, hit record on the point cache and watch it not work!!

ok i downloaded the freebies but where do i put this file i put it in a few different places but they dont show up

Afternoon all! I'm having a bit of trouble. I have a scene with a geosphere object, which I'm using for a Find Target. The particles move out from the source in all directions, and a Data Test checks their proximity to the geosphere - if they get close enough, they enter the Find Target event. The problem is that I need control over the "docking" rotation of the particles when they reach the surface of the geosphere. Imagine the particles are all shape instances of a capital T. I want them to land on the surface with the bottom of the T hitting the surface, and the upright part being aligned with the surface normal at that point on the sphere. I have tried with a GoTo Rotation along with a Data operator, but I can't get it to work. I've used 2 Geometry SubOps to get the Closest Point by Normal and then the Point Normal, and tried feeding the vector output of this into a rotation Output, but it doesn't seem to do what I want. I've seen Oleg referring to Surface Alignment in Box 2 - though I can't see that option anywhere in the documentation..... - but ideally I'd like to use Box 3 to accomplish this. I'm sure it's possible.... I'm just missing something.... Oh, and another thing which is annoying me is that I want the find target to use Surface Normals as its direction so the particles move around the geosphere a bit before docking.... but I keep getting particles traveling through the sphere :( Any help with either issue would be immensely appreciated! Z.

Does anybody know of a way to ease in the start of a find target operator? When particles enter a find target, they change direction to move towards the target. Unfortunately, this change is sometimes very abrupt and pronounced, especially if the particles were heading in a different direction at that point. The "Ease In" option in the operator only affects the end of the process, not the start. If you visualise the trajectory of each particle, I guess I'm wanting to "bezier" the point at which the particle enters the find target process - just round it off a bit. Any ideas? I have access to all 3 boxes BTW... Many thanks for any suggestions, Z.

I am trying to get particles to stick to a moving object and if the particle's speed is above value x send it to another event for spawning, then if the particles speed drops below value y it will go back to the first event where its not spawning. Spawn by speed did not give me the results i wanted and sending the particle back to the initial event randomized its position so particles would disappear from areas that move and stop a lot and bunch up in areas that moved very little. Is there a way to have the particles stay where they first positioned on my object? Here is an example scene. I do have box 3 so that is an option.

Have I missed somthing? The otherday a colleuge of mine showed my this. [url]http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5640639&postcount=4805%20http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5675040&postcount=8[/url] It looks very exciting and I wanted to know more, what better place to look for information than this? But I couldn't find any (did a couple of searches) Is there any reason why this wasn't posted here first? Ignore this post, if I just missed the thread on this site.

Hi guys i have simulated fume now i need separate fume pass for compositing i m new to fumeFX so dont have any idea to do that. any help would be really appreciated. its very urgent thanks in advance. Naveed :roll:

I done a quick search, but couldn't find anything on the subject. Is there some way or script out there that makes it posiible to have vray proxy trees scattered by the pFlow system? Thanks

It's been a while I haven't been using PFlow, so this might sound a bit naive :oops: ... I just want to keep scattered objects aligned to the surface normals based on Bobo's famous "Hairy Teapot" tutorial. I've been using "Control Speed Continuous" and "Speed Space Follow" to keep the object aligned, but it creates some strangly flickering animation, even with a simple bend and subframe sampling... I send the max 2008 scene along, thanks for you help. Best, Robert

hi all i have a scene with particles with animated shape on, the actual particles are not moving and so i am getting no velocity data or motion blur. Is there a fix for this? cheers paul

Is available. Post taken from CGtalk... PFlow Scripting Tutorials Due Soon from CG Academy Just thought I'd give a quick heads-up for a new series of tutorials that CG Academy is due to release very soon (think days, no weeks...). I say tutorial, rather than DVDs, as at first these titles will be available only via download. Rest assured though that after a short period the same articles will be available for purchase on DVD media. Releasing via download allows us to get titles "on the shelves" just as soon as the material is available. With physical media following soon after. What are the titles? We'll we have an Advanced level series called Particle Flow Scripting, and it will contain two titles, The Pflow Script Show and The PFlow Script Show : Act 2. The first of the two titles teaches the basic framework of MAXScript access in Particle Flow. You'll really need this tutorial to get on your way with scripting Birthing, Tests and general Operators. It explains how 3dsmax works under the hood, giving you an insight into its use of channels, particle IDs, Event Indicies and so on. The tutorial culminates in a number of real world practical examples, including all of the script access points. A must have title for any serious Particle Flow TD. [img]http://www.cg-academy.net/boxart/104_BoxArt_INTERNET.jpg[/img] The second title then takes these basic principles and starts to expand the scripting boundaries outside of pure Particle Flow. Here Bobo will show you how to make particles move along splines. How to define targets for your particles, how to move scene objects (including lights and helpers) using particles, and bake that motion into animation keyframes. The tutorial culminates with Bobo showing you how to create a production ready particle animation baking utility, and how to build PFlows in a procedural manner based on the collisions of a Reactor simulation. Once again, pure TD gold. [img]http://www.cg-academy.net/boxart/105_BoxArt_INTERNET.jpg[/img] More news on these as an when they are released. Please spread the word. If you have any questions, please ask away here. Cheers __________________ . Chris Thomas www.cg-academy.net

Hi Oleg and everybody .... I want to make an interaction between sand particles and to get it stacking over each other ,,, caused by a bird ariasing from the ground ( sand beach )whih not wet ... is there a direct solution to do this ?if not , how to fake it ?

Hi Oleg ... I have crash problem in 3ds max when adding object in position object event ... just when pressing add object button and just in yhis file that contains animated and rigged bird ..... i need help

Hi there I am doing an effect which is sort of based on some blinds that turns 180 degrees sequentially, revealing the back side material. Is there any way to control which way that a go to rotation operator turns? Counter clock vise rotation is easy, how do I make a clockwise rotation? Thanks

hey guys, i'm still a newbie in the pfflow. it'll be great if someone can help me with this. i'm trying to make something like this in the gallery. http://www.orbaz.com/gallery/?id=8 like the descriptions said on the above page. "The Lock/Bond operator can control both positional and rotational bonding of particles. In this test the position of particles is firmly locked but rotation is flexible and is influenced by Force operators. The Group operators restrict the area where the wind forces are applied." i get the concept of using the lock/bond to lock the position and using the rotation. my attached scene is pretty simple stuff. but not sure whats really wrong with this. any idea guys? thanks. attached file is max9 version

Hi, I have a stack of papers (shape-instances) that I blow away as soon as a collision object penetrates them. They are all flat on the surface. On the instanced shape I have a Bend modifier that is turned off. I wonder whether there's a way to gradually turn that bend modifier on, per particle, as it gets lifted by the collision trigger. In short - I want my flat still papers to turn to bent papers when they are lifted into the air. Is there a way, perhaps, alternatively, to link a morpher slider with that trigger? Thanks.

I'm a student at Southern Methodist University, in a program focused on creating art for games. In my Directed Focus Study courses, I've been introduced to pFlow in Max, and I've gotten a reasonably good handle on it, torn through a lot of Pete Draper and Allan McKay tutorials, and done some stuff on my own. I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to pursue VFX as a career direction. I've got a small amount of money set aside for educational purposes, about enough for a single piece of academic software and a couple of books or DVD tutorials. What resources would you recommend to someone new who wants to learn to be a better FX artist, and begin to assemble a portfolio?

hi i am spawning particles with no speed, no spin, to produce a trails effect. My emmitter has a path constraint and it is winding around and looping lots pretty fast. THe problem is that no matter how much I lower my integration step, they don't extract the positional data on a dubframe basis so my trails are not smoothly flowing like the spline upon which the emitter is travelling. There is an improvemt when i go to half step, but anything beyond that simply does Nada! the half step is not enough. If i apply a force and get the spawning to be driven through this, the integration steps works as it should, but it seems it doesn't get the translation data in from max properly on object translation? any help please? cheers Paul

Hi, I'm trying to get a bunch of leaves falling off a tree onto the ground. I've used Allan McKay's method of first positioning the leaves on the ground and then have them find that target position based on their stored original position in the vector channel. My problem is - I want the leaves to spin as they fall - and if I do that then they penetrate the floor with various rotations. I've added the use orientation channel in the first event and could print out all the orientations of the particles on the ground the way I want them to be (pretty much all have 0,0,Z - where only Z has an angle). I can probably store all those orientations in an array but: 1 - I don't know how to access that array on the next event (seems like global arrays or variables don't transfer from one script operator to the next - or - just my lack of knowledge?) 2 - Even if I did get the orientation values - how do I use them? Since the particles will enter the next event one at a time - can I constantly run an IF statement on all the particle count and assign the new orientation to all even though not all are there yet? I tried the Goto Rotation node but didn't seem to have any luck with that. Once again - maybe I'm just not familiar enough with it. I don't know if I'm clear enough with where I'm stuck - I'm just interested in having the leaves rotate and then ease into a horizontal position on the ground level (laying flat). Thanks.

Hi, I'm wondering if this is possible with the box3 or 1 plugins.. Using pflow instancing geomety using the shape instance and have those instances self collide with each other. From what I've read I understand only box3 is able to make proper inter particle collison with pflow, but still, is it possible to make it work with instanced geometry? Thanks!

Hey there I downloaded from here some presets you guys put on Particle Flow Tools: Box#3 Barter Hall topic and I have a max9 but they dont appear on my data presets eventhough I put them in plugcfg folder on PF presets folder pls tell me how to load them...thanks

I have a pflow which generates a number of simple planes and controls their animation. Is it possible to bake out this animation so that each particle becomes an individual object with baked in keyframes for pos/rot/scale. I know I can use the mesher, but it results in shape animation rather than standard translation. Cheers Paul

I have a couple of helix splines that are WSM Path Deformed to a single, simple 4 vertex spline. This allows me to do vertex animation on single spline and have the helix splines deform to match the single spline. The single spline is linked to a dummy and the dummy is animated moving across the screen. So basically you've got: moving dummy, and a vert animated moving spline (which deforms 2 helix splines). I have a simple PFlow setup where I use a Speed by Icon with Path Constraint that moves the icons down the helix splines. All this results in an animation showing a moving vortex of particles that move across the screen. Problem is, the particles start out following the helix splines perfectly but later they diverge from the helix splines and the later still, they return to follow the helix splines perfectly. I can't seem to get them to stay on the path the whole time. I have bumped up the accel limit but haven't seen any change. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks! [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2ZmZbJ][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2ZmZbJ.jpg[/img][/url]

I would like to use a birth script to define object chunks, but the timing of their creation defined by a birth material operator. Is there any way to achieve this? Ie the position of the seeds specified by the existing location of scene goemetry, but particles only being birthed when the material of the emitter is white.

How can I get rid of a particle view null that pops into files if u accidently open Pflow. it only is visable during merge, but sometimes seems to cause errors, and at the least makes me have to overwrite if I am using P flow in another scene during merge. eithier way a hassle. cheers sam

I have a scene that causes serious memory problems when my particle count goes over 100k. I was thinking a cheap way to avoid rendering the scene in multiple passes would be to write a script that is executed every frame prior to render that :- 1 - Counts the number of particles in the scene 2 - If count > threshold do { 3 - Change render "Quantity multiplier" to reduce rendered particles to below threshold 4 - else render multiplier = 100% This would work fine in my scene, as by the time I need to start culling particles, having random particles disappear from the render 'probably' wont be visible. Is this the best way to limit the number of particles rendered? I know I could reduce the overall number of particles in the scene, but for parts of the animation where the camera is close to the particles I need the higher density of particles to be visible (it is a forrest). No doubt there is a far more straight forward approach to this problem that I'm just not aware of! :)

I just wanted to clarify how box-1 creates the particles with a birth texture. Does it spread the number of particles specified in Quantity:amount across the entire surface, and then only actually create particles when the material is suitably white? eg I have amount set to 10000, but the plugin only reports a total amount 1740 particles. Is the number specified in Amount limited by the pflow system parameter upper-limit? or does that only apply to the number of particles actually created? Thanks for your help. Oh, is this the right forum to post in? It seems awfully quiet around here!

I have created a loft, cone-like object which, for purposes of discussion, we'll call a tornado shape. I can animate this object and change it's shape/movement, etc. I would like to have particles move down the length of the cone as they rotate around that surface resulting in a spiral type movement. (I have experimented with the Vortex SW but it does not give the precise control that I need so I must use a base object that I CAN control.) I can use a Position Object operator to make the particles appear on the cone surface but I have not been able to find a way to make the particles rotate around that cone surface and also move down the length of the cone surface over time. Are there any PFlow tools that will create this movement on the surface of the cone object? Thanks!

I'm trying to delete a pflow by maxscript. but so far Ｉ　ａｌｗａｙｓ　ｆｏｕｎｄ　ｓｏｍｅ　ｎｏｄｅｓ　ａｒｅ　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｌｉｖｅ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｃｅｎｅ． ｈｅｒｅ　ｉｓ　ｗｈａｔ　ｉ　ｄｉｄ. pf is the particle source. [code］ (local pf=$'pf_source" for x=1 to pf.getNumInitialActionLists() do ( local pfAct=pf.getInitialActionList 1 for z=1 to pfAct.numActions() do delete (pfAct.getAction 1) delete pfAct ) for x=1 to pf.numActions() do delete (pf.getAction 1) delete pf ) [/code] it looks the source and event can't be removed. right now i can only do the complete delete by manually select all nodes in the pflow view and hit delete key. thanks

I have a question about how to create PF correctly by a button? Please try the following script. the pflow script is copy directly from the pflow help doc. and when you click the button. it create a pflow system. the problem is that it looks the pflow source is created but no particle can display（check the cylinder surface and compare with just run the creation part directly). [code:1] rollout rollout1 "pflowtest" width:120 height:50 ( button btn1 "Create PFlow" pos:[20,20] width:80 height:20 on btn1 pressed do ( ----------------- -- SCENE SETUP -- ----------------- -- Set scene animation range to 150 frames animationRange = interval 0f 150f -- Create Cylinder primitive cyl=cylinder radius:44 height:44 heightsegs:5 sides:18 pos:[-60, -55, 0] -- Create a Torus primitive tor=torus radius1:55 radius2:20 smooth:2 pos:[135, 120, 0] -- Create a Vortex Space Warp vor=vortex timeOff:33 axialStrength:22 rotationStrength:33 iconSise:40 rotation:(quat -1 0 0 0) pos:[20,35,-5] -- PF_Flow setup pf=PF_Source Show_Logo:off Show_Emitter:off Quantity_Viewport:100 isSelected:true ------------------------------------- -- Action List - Appending Example -- ------------------------------------- -- Disable automatic Event Encapsulation – begin editing: ParticleFlow.BeginEdit() a1 = RenderParticles() --define Action 1 pf.AppendAction a1 --append the Action to PF_Source ParticleFlow.EndEdit() --End editing, enable Auto-Encapsulation x=y=1 --Initialize two variables --Get the location of the PF_Source in Particle View: pf.GetPViewLocation &x &y ------------------------ -- Define First Event -- ------------------------ ParticleFlow.BeginEdit() --start editing -- Create a Birth Action for Event 1 ev1_a1 = Birth Emit_Start:0 Emit_Stop:0 Amount:300 -- Create a Position Object Action for Event 1 ev1_a2 = Position_Object Location:4 Emitter_Objects:#(tor) name: "PositionObjectFirst" -- Comment the Position Object pf.SetComments ev1_a2 "The operator defines the destination point inside the target volume" -- Create a Script Operator ev1_a3 = Script_Operator() -- Set the script operator’s script code as string. -- The code enables Position and Vector channels, -- the writes the particle position in the Vector channel -- for all new particles. ev1_a3.proceed_script = "on ChannelsUsed pCont do ( pCont.usePosition = true pCont.useVector = true ) on Init pCont do (\n ) on Proceed pCont do ( count = pCont.NumParticles() for i in 1 to count do ( pCont.particleIndex = i if (pCont.particleNew) then ( pCont.particleVector = pCont.particlePosition) ) ) on Release pCont do (\n )" -- Comment the action: pf.SetComments ev1_a3 "The script is used to dump particle position to script vector channel" -- Clone the Position_Object action from Event 1 -- The result of the cloning will be stored in the -- by-reference variable dc. maxOps.cloneNodes ev1_a2 newNodes:&dc -- Get the clone (first element of array) ev1_a4 = dc[1] -- Set the name of the action ev1_a4.name = "PositionObjectSecond" -- Set the Cylinder as the Emitter ev1_a4.Emitter_Objects = #(cyl) -- Comment the action: pf.SetComments ev1_a4 "The operator defines the initial position of a particle inside a start volume. The destination position is overwritten but the real value is kept in Script Vector channel" -- Create some more actions needed to control the particle system ev1_a5 = Speed Direction:3 ev1_a6 = Rotation() ev1_a7 = ShapeStandard Shape:1 ev1_a8 = DisplayParticles Type:6 Color:(color 255 0 0) -- Create a new empty event, then append all already created -- actions to it: ev1 = Event() ev1.AppendAction ev1_a1 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a2 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a3 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a4 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a5 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a6 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a7 ev1.AppendAction ev1_a8 -- Disable editing, enable Auto-Event-Encapsulation ParticleFlow.EndEdit() -- Append the event as the Initial Action List to the PF_Source. -- This will connect the Event to the PF_Source. pf.appendInitialActionList ev1 -- Position the Event inside the Particle View ev1.SetPViewLocation x (y+100) ------------------------------------- -- Action List - Inserting Example -- ------------------------------------- --Begin Editing again ParticleFlow.BeginEdit() ev1_a9 = Spin SpinRate:200 Variation:55 --Create a Spin action ev1_a10 = Force Influence:111 --Create a Force --Set the Vortex as Space Warp in the Force ev1_a10.Force_Space_Warps = #(vor) --Create and setup a Find_Target action: ev1_a11 = Find_Target() ev1_a11.name = "FindTarget" ev1_a11.Cruise_Speed_Variation = 1000 ev1_a11.Acceleration_Limit=3000 ev1_a11.Aim_Point_Type = 2 ev1_a11.Icon_Size = 0 -- Comment the action: pf.SetComments ev1_a11 "The destination point is defined by script vector. The script vector value was defined by the Script Operator 01 from the Position Object 01" -- Insert the new actions into the existing Event ev1.InsertAction ev1_a9 8 ev1.InsertAction ev1_a10 9 ev1.InsertAction ev1_a11 10 ParticleFlow.EndEdit() -- Create a Second Event and its actions: ParticleFlow.BeginEdit() ev2_a1 = Speed Speed:0 ev2 = Event() ev2_a2 = DisplayParticles Type:6 Color:(color 0 255 0) ev2.AppendAction ev2_a1 ev2.AppendAction ev2_a2 ParticleFlow.EndEdit() --Connect the second Event to the Find_Target ev1_a11.setNextActionList ev2 ev1_a11 --Reposition the even ev2.SetPViewLocation x (y+400) -- Make copy of PF_Source and exchange Emitter objects -- for Position_Object operators: -- Clone the PF_Source and the two Emitters, -- store the clones in a by-reference variable maxOps.CloneNodes #(pf, ev1, ev2) newNodes:&dc -- Get the PF_Source and Emitter clones pfc = dc[1] ev1c = dc[2] ev2c = dc[3] -- Get the current position of the Particle View... x=y=1 pfc.GetPViewLocation &x &y -- Reposition the two Events ev1c.SetPViewLocation x (y+100) ev2c.SetPViewLocation x (y+400) -- Copy the emitter objects from the original Position_Objects if $PositionObjectFirst01 != undefined then ( $PositionObjectFirst01.Emitter_Objects = ev1_a4.Emitter_Objects ) if $PositionObjectSecond01 != undefined then ( $PositionObjectSecond01.Emitter_Objects = ev1_a2.Emitter_Objects ) -- Bind the Find_Target Test output to the clone of the Second Event if $FindTarget01 != undefined then ( $FindTarget01.setNextActionList ev2c $FindTarget01 ) -- Switch to Modify Tab max modify mode -- Open Particle View to see what happened... ParticleFlow.OpenParticleView() ) ) CreateDialog rollout1 lockHeight:true lockWidth:true escapeEnable:true [/code:1]

Hi, I need to do a crowd simulation of a large pedestrian flow at a traffic light system. There's at least 8 main paths they will be walking along and can cross in different places to get to different routes (diagonally and laterally). I need to have all the people walk along the pavements and stop when they get to a red light, wait for the green light (there's a set cycle with some going green at different times) and then randomly go down different routes. so... in pflow can I change a point cache file or bip file on a different event. maybe by the script operator? so I can go from a walk to a stop to a walk, while aiming for a target. If I cant change either of these is this going to be possible? Any suggestions apreciated Thanks very much Nick

Hi Folks, i've got a simple enough scene with some animated bird meshes taking off and changing to a looped bird cycle with a find target too. The memory overheads are massive under max 9 and it seems a bit odd. I have the shape instances turned off in the viewport and i'm only using ticks but it still shoots up around 2000 megs of memory for max - is this normal? I've stuck the scene up at http://www.joconnell.com/forums/bird_particles_10.max - it's something i've done a lot before, are there any known issues with max 9 pflow? Cheers! john

i just helped out at the german 3dsmax forum with a feather rig toony style: http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/LockBond_federkleid02.zip [img]http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/federkleid02.gif[/img] have fun experimenting with it... kind regards, anselm

Hy Orbaz Community, i have a pretty tough task ahead of me as it seems... i have to produce a flocking crowd of butterflies landing properly on an object. flocking and finding the target is easy bt the proper landing causes headache :( :? for now i test on collision and let the objects to to rotation so they sit random horizontally on the object. but that looks just odd. maybe i´m going the wrong way here?!? any tips on landing would be awesome. i did a lot of locking and find target stuff but never had to land a flocking crowd properly. preview (2.2MB): http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/flocking-landing.avi Maxfile(3.8MB): http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/flocking01.zip cubes ladn properly on object: [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV1YmSuA][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV1YmSuA.jpg[/img][/url] butterflies land BELOW the object: [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV1YmUZJ][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV1YmUZJ.jpg[/img][/url] thanks in advance and with kindest regards, Anselm

How can I force Pflow, to create a single Particle on every Vertex I have selected? I have 30 Verts selected and pflow emitts 30 particles for 1 frame, but the emission is random. some verts emit more at once some emit none! is there a work around? cheers Michael, owner of no box!

Is there a way to have a better control over surface alignment on animated objects? i only get unsatisfying random docking results with lock/bond and the particles are not evenly spread over the surface. i already tried Allan Mckay's script that stores the position vector before particles get send out to the original start event but it doesn't work with animated object.

I have a map plugin that I'd like to add pflow support to. Is it possible find out if the current sample is shading a pflow mesh, and if so, what the particle index is? I've had a fish around and am not sure if it's going to be possible. Rhys.

How is box 2 coming? :D I could have sworn it was for sale like a year or 2 ago on Turbosquid :? Guess not. Is there a list of operators and such that it will include? All important multithreaded question: How is that coming? Thanks 8)

I wonder if anyone can help, I've got a large number of shots which are separate Max files, and I've made a simple particle flow that is to be used in each shot. The problem is, I'd like to create the particle flow once, and then merge it into the max file for each shot, but when I try to do this at the moment, the particle flow comes in corrupted. Am I missing something, or are there any scripts out there that alow you to merge particle flow setups from one Max file to another?

i recently gave an interview at the cgarena mag...might be interesting to someone :) [img]http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/ezine/images/apr_may08_issue.jpg[/img] http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/ezine/apr2008.html with kindest regards, anselm

camera cull max9 freebies when having betas of the boxes installed? maybe im stupid again tho :) just tested the freebies i haven´t had installed for a while... [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2iXcj9][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2iXcj9.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi I'm trying to get a bunch of particles to orbit a sphere. Satellites around the Earth. I'm using SpeedBySurface to move them round a larger sphere but it's only half working. Here are a couple of questions I have .... 1. Increasing the speed in SpeedBySurface sends the particles away from the surface. I'd like varying speeds. Is there no way I can constrain them to the surface? 2. I'd also like the particles to point towards the centre of the sphere. A Rotation operator set to SpeedSpaceFollow does it, but the movement is jerky as partices move from polygon to polygon of the target object. Is there another way to do this? Or a way to smooth out the movement? Thanks Mark

Well let me make you clear mu scene first. I am having sphere made up of particle volume and it is freely falling on the groung also making of particle. And on this collision, both the sphere and ground is ruining its shape very randomly. What I want her is Can I save the original shape of the scene just ruining the part of collision? I know the Lock/Bond can do this But How? Pease let me know. I have to Particle flow scource in My scene. One following sphere and another in the terrain. It will make me happy if one particle scource covers the but thing on the scene.

Oleg well I am to own core to quad to have speed up ..ing the particle flow simulation and thinking particle as well. Suggest me will it really work?

what's the best way to export PFlow particles to animated meshes? we'd like to get one separate, animated mesh per particle... we're more interested in position, rotation & scale than mesh animation... and hopefully not have to use Mesher+Snapshot+SkinWrap+PointCache per particle... thanks!

http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/muren Dennis Muren, the senior visual-effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, talks with David Denby about his craft, his sources of inspiration, and how to translate a director’s vision into special effects.

So I'm trying to do a cross product in box#3 but I don't see that listed as one of the vector functions. There is an orthogonalize, but I'm not sure that's the same thing. Can anyone offer some advice here? thanks Tim

http://www.fxguide.com/article463.html just read that article. pflow was used to replicated quite an amount of runnig huns e.g. cheers, anselm

Is it possible to define variables (general variable, not per particle) in a script operator and use them in a box3 data operator? The problem is that the data operator handles (or at least displays) only 4 digits, so I want to define my variable in script and then load it in my data operator.

Hi Folks Please have a look at the attached gif,- presenting a major challenge at work. My knowledge of Pflow and Orbaz Tools a limited to basic, liniar structures and slowly but surely, I'm getting stuck. Lots of things are going on. Color-coded particles (spheres) move to and from strict formations,- and to and from scale and speed variations. Any help will be deeply appreciated, as will a quote from Oleg to produce a "template" for me to use as a platform for the project. Kind regards, Mike [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV1FKZiJ][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV1FKZiJ.jpg[/img][/url]

Is there any way to link a dummy to a particle flow particle? I have a single particle generated from a flow that I want to link a camera too. I tried using the mesher compound object in hopes that that would do the trick but it didn't. Any other ideas? -John

Particles move in cylinder rendomly.from them two particles come closer and disapper and at that spot new shaped particle (single) will born.This thing will happend time to time. Is this possible ? How ?

Hi, Particles move in cylinder rendomly.from them two particles come closer and disapper and at that spot new shaped particle (single) will born.This thing will happend time to time. Is this possible ? How ? Thanx Alpa

Could have sworn there is a way to offset the time to a cache disk operator... Thought it was built into the cache disk operator, so am I missing something? Since I'm now attempting to learn box 3, I tried building a data operator similar to how the disk cache translate operator I had asked about earlier : http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1538 [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq4ClOvi][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq4ClOvi.jpg[/img][/url]

I have some falling snow cached to disk, and I want to transform the cache to a different location in a scene... is that possible? Tried to move it but the pivot moves around. Tried and xform modifier w/ the same results. thanks, -janov

Hi Is there any way to control Particle size by Grayscale map ? I want to create some water drops on bottle distributed and scaled on grayscale map. I have already distributed particles the way i wanted now i need to scale them. I am quite new to PF tool box 3. Cheers Chris

I have an imagesequence of a radio play tooncharacter. The clients idea is to let him get created by a bunch of covers flying from out the camera into the scene. We reversed the flow, so now the character break up into praticles. They pass several targets and fly to the camera. this will be reveresed in post at the end again. The problem is: The material of the particles should blend from the character to the covers. We have a charactersequence already assigned to a material and we have a Mat with many Submaterials (different covers) How can I assign sticky UVWmap to the particles my char is breaking up to, so it looks like the character itself will breakup? In the end the particles have to be quads for the covers, so blow up a mesh is way problematic. I tried a mesher with a cam mapping, but hence this mesh is recreated every frame, the UVs are not sticky. Help! Thanks Michael, (NOT owner of any box) Edit: (max2008)

i have created a grass surface using a simple shape instance and pos.object. I'd like to place waterdrops with are also instanced on each of the grass strains. what's the approach for that? Are there any tutorials around?

hi, I am facing a problem with the mapping object feature in box1. It looks like this does not work correctly when used in combination with vray. To reproduce, load tutorial file tut_mappingobject_finish.max and switch the renderer to vray - mapping no longer works correctly on particles. When I use the mesher compound on the particles i can retrieve the correct mapping. Unfortuately I am dealing with a complex particle setup and rather would not want to use the mesher on top. Rendering with scanline is not a option either. Thank you very much. -michael

hi, is it possible to reverse a particle simulation? thank you smes

Hi guys, Im trying to get the effect of a person with water running over their body then dripping off when they hit the lowest points, eg elbows, hands, jacket tails etc. I am trying to use lock/bond for this but am having less than optimal results with particles not sliding down the mesh and jumping off randomly. I have followed the instructions in the helb but its not working properly. Any Ideas?

Oleg, PFlow in MAX10_32 I created a simple PFlow where I had a PLANE object and in the PFlow, I had a Position Object operator to make the particles created on the plane object. I also had Density by Material in use. All was well and the particles were created where desired. Then I realized that it would be better for my object to be a cylinder instead of a plane. The plane object was on one layer so I created a new layer and created a cylinder on it. I then went to go re-assign the Position Object operator to use the new cylinder and I removed the plane object from the list. The particles were showing in the viewport as still being in the area of the plane and not the newly assigned cylinder. So I hid the plane layer and the plane and all particles disappeared (even though the PFSource resides on a different layer). I could not get the particles to show on the cylinder no matter what I did. But when I unhide the plane layer again, both the plane and particles are shown but now the particles fill the circular shape of the cylinder instead of the square shape of the plane. But they will not be shown or rendered unless the plane layer is unhidden. I then deleted the Position Object operator and added another. Still, the particles are only shown if the plane layer is visible. Any idea how to get the particles to only be shown when the PFSource is visible and not on some object that was previously assigned to the Position Object operator? Thanks!

Are new installers required for the PFlowTools Box1 and Box3 in MAX10 (I can't bear to call it MAX2008... it's idiotic)? I have copied over the MAX9 plugin directories and edited INIs, but get errors related to the DCPFLICs stuff including the PFlow stuff. If I try to run the MAX9 installers again, they ask 'do you want to Modify, Repair, etc. the MAX9 install?'. No... I want to install the MAX9 plugs into MAX10. Thanks!

Hello All, I'm fairly new to PF so let me know if I should be googling a different term or looking through the help file for something specific. Also, I am using Max 9 (no service packs) and have no plugins installed for pf. The preamble: I have muzzle flashes that I've set up using a standard flow and linked the direction away from the nozzle using a speed of 0.01. I then create copies of the flow and attach each copy to different nozzles. This allows me to link the PF icon to the muzzle and always fires in the right direction and I can control when they start and finish firing for each gun. I have animated the muzzle flash with three pieces of geometry that scale up and then scale back down over a few frames. The Question: I want to have multiple guns firing at the same time, but they all seem to play back the muzzle flashes in sync. I've tried setting the births to start at different times, increasing and decreasing the rate of particles and changing the seed with no luck in changing the overall timing. Is there a way to offset their births so that they look like a random scene of muzzle flashes :) rather than synchronized yahoos :). Or do I need to create several animations and each pf needs to get its own anim? Thanks in advance, Jason

Hi, sorry for the off-topic. Feel free to remove it, but I can't find a 'bug report form' for the forum itself. The problem is, that the forum logs me out automatically, when I leave. So when I come back I have to log in again. I've checked the FAQ and it says [quote]If you do not check the Log me in automatically box when you log in, the board will only keep you logged in for a preset time. This prevents misuse of your account by anyone else. To stay logged in, check the box during login.[/quote] but when I log in there is no such check box. Is this something my browser messes up or is the FAQ outdated? Anyway, if someone could provide me with a way to let the forum remember me, it will be greatly appreciated. Kind regards, Sander de Regt ShadowMaker SdR The Netherlands

hi, i´m using the commercial version of box1 with max 9 64bit. i got problems with lock bond- the particles behaving incorrect. for example: i open the example scene "LockBond Moving teapot" when i change nothing everything works fine, but for example as soon as i switch the rotation Lock/Bond offset limit checkbox off and on again- the particles are not sticking anymore to the teapot. is lockbond bugfree? because i read topics in the forum talking about bugs with lockbond in max 9. im using version 1.07 of box1 please help axel

hi, i´m looking for a magnetic field (lines)effect. or the effect of swarf near a magnet any ideas? please help axel

Hi Everyone, I m Animator, and working in Dubai as an 3D Animator. I started to work with PF Source. Actually I want to Birth Particles from the Emiter in any axis I mean Emit for -y to +y or -x to +x. but right now emiter emit particles from entire Icon.

hello.. y just installed box1 and box3demo in max9_64 on xp64... all works fine with box1 but i can´t see box3 in particle view.. the installation was ok and it´s there on the plugins folder... so i don´t know where´s the problemm.. i have one first disk with xp64- and in the second disk are installed both max 32 and 64 versions.. maybe there´s a problem with that.. but since box1 and 3 works perfectly in max32 i don´t know what it can be the problem.. i don´t know if it´s a valid question one about a demo version but i can´t make it work so.. thanks... i hope you understand my vagabundo inglish

hello, I saw in the "Orbaz news" the topic "Particle Flow and Particle Flow Tools on the small screen". i try to emit pflow on dreamscape sea surface and it's very slow!! i saw in the topic that they used a low-resolution proxy surface, using displacement maps created from the adaptive sea surface. they emit the particle from this low resolution mesh!! i would like to know if someone have an idea to do it.... maybe it's very hard or maybe i'm so stupid, i don't know. thank you very much eric

We're about to start on a new commission that will require a lot of building destruction. We've been looking at Blast Code for Maya, but would really like to keep the simulation all in Max, as we're using pfflow for the smoke and dust. Also buying Maya just for blastcode seems a bit crazy! :shock: I just have a few questions about Box2 if anyone can help? Will Box2 have a procedural fracture tool? Is suitable for large-scale building destruction? Will it allow fine tuning of the simulation to create specific destruction events?

Hi, I've been trying to use Pflow to create an aerial view of a city, the theory being that it might be less memory hungry than, say Greeble. I have been trying to use real world mapping co-ordinates on the textures for buildings so that windows stay a consistent size, regardless of the size of the building object. I'm a little hazy on how real world mapping works, if using that means that unique UVs are store per object (meaning that they are no longer instanced). Anyway, I don't seem to be able to get Pflow to recognise the real world mapping, so the windows scale in relation to the size of the particles. I've tried using the mapping object from Box #1 and picking another box with real world mapping applied, but that didn't work. The standard mapping operator doesn't mention real world mapping either. Of course I could snapshot the resulting particle system, but then that I lose the advantage of instancing. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Steve

I have the simplest flow possible, render>birth>position icon>display The birth start/stop is 0. If i set the timeline to be 4000 frames and then scrub the timeline it stutters as pflow is calculating a little bit of something. Why is it havn't to calculate stuff when nothing is moving? If i add a cache then the problem is alleviated but it seems to need to cache every frame which results in a large memory foot print for static particles. I assume this is normal behaviour but why is this so?

hi there, I have problem with chunk objects to particles.., I generated chunk with fracture script..then I am using script from bobo to make that base chunk shape to particles.., it seem work. the problem is my base chunks are animated (as dummy not rendered), its seem my particles DONT FOLLOW movement my base chunks animation if I PLAY FORWARD ANIMATION, BUT IF I PLAY BACKWARD my particles following base chunks animation.. (ex. if I played from frame 0 to 25..particles dont follow, but if I play from 25 to 0..particles following base chunks) there is something wrong with script? or other thread for bake particles to chunks with animated? because I think that bobo's script work perfectly for chunks that doesn't move or animated.. currently in project that I must cracked face 3d model.., the cracked I am using fracture script..then using script from bobo to make that fracture to particles..then using collusion to make cracked fly.. thanks for help.. prie

Why when you render the 80 sided sphere it looks really low poly?

uh im doing an animation where lockbond particles are slidng accross a deforming mesh, while they are sliding they accumulate on edges and showing my characters topology. any way to fix this?

Hi there I want to ask iam using max9 PFlow and i made object shatter around thats ok but how can i make that shattered particles go back where they have been previously. 2.How can I make particles shatter around using Speed test operator so if my object rotates with large force they will fall out of it? THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!

hi, i´m rendering a simple pflow scene and getting nomotion blur wether image nor object motion blur. i´m using the scanline renderer on a 64bit machine. what´s wrong? axel

I've seen, that the cache operator which you sell separately is only for 32bit. What about the cache operator in toolbox#3? Is it for 32bit only, too? thanks inctube

Hi there I am trying to do the one Particle per Vertex rutine, so often metioned arround here. As I understand it, the "position object+" operator which can do this, were freeware up untill Max version 8. Then in Max 9, the "position object+" operator got bulid in to Box3?! But when I install the the box3 demo version from this site, there is no alternative position obejct operator, only the standard (which cant do the one particle per vertex, as far as I can tell?). The only way I can do the one particle per vertex runtine is by using the object oberator copied off the oneParticlePerVertex max file which acommondates box3? Am I missing something? Thanks and kinf regards Scootz

hello has anybody a solution for particles flowing over a (shape)animated object? I used speed by surface but its not working. the particles stay in place while the animated eobject is going trough them( simple example: plane with animated noise modiefier and the particles should flow over the plane) please help thanks axel

Hi All I think this would be simple for anyone. I have an emitter sphere, and I would like to create some kind of copper wires around it, wrapping again and again. I cant seem to find SDeflector or when I attach a force to the PFlow I cannot select it. Is there a simple way I can create 'wires' within the emitter sphere so they are bound by its surface? Peter

Is there a recommended way to install PFTools (Box 1 and 3) to a shared network plug-in directory? So i only have to do one install... This would be for Max 9. thanks, jeff b.

I noticed this weird behavior inside a standard pflow. I’m guessing this is just a bad side effect of the pflow architecture. Basically it looks as though the first spawn is adversly affecting the behavior of the second spawn. Both spawns are identical yet they yield different results. The second spawn only processes every n-th particle depending on the speed of parent. [url]www.blipland.com/temp/badspwnning.max[/url] I'm usually rocking the box#3. But I love the spawn by distance, so I went classic pflow when I ran into this little glitch. Cheers, Ben.

Hello to all of you dear people. I am aprentice to a company where they do not have this particle toolbox but they use particleflow. I have a question because i want to make a project and nobody in here could help me. I wonder if it is possible to transform particles from an emiter into an object by using just particleflow for 3DSmax7. I know that Mister Orbaz made also Sandblaster but now here is particleflow.---It is possible to transform particles emitted into another shape after they travel on a path? Tha path follow is solved because I read some great tutorials in here, but the transformation is not solved. Please if anyone know how to do that and could help me will be in my heart! MAny thanks for any help you caold provide. :D

I recently purchased the stand alone cache program. Perhaps I am applying it wrong, but it seems quite a bit slower than just using PF by itself. My animation is 1700 frames with particles from frame 1240 -1700. Any modification and the update takes over an hour for the Cache plugin to recalculate. It is actually faster to just render out (we have a render farm) as opposed updating the plug-in. I didn't want to post on the CGtalk forum so as to cause a negative impression of the product. We have added the express save already. Thanks in advance for any advice. David

Hi all, I have a new problem and have been unable to find a solution using the search function. I really hope there is a solution & I just haven't been able to find it! So.... I am simulating a chemical reaction with various molecules. In brief, I have a single animated mesh in which different parts move around to create different compounds. This mesh is my instanced object & the animated changes happen at the correct time in relation to particle age. So far so good... I also need the different parts of the mesh to have different colours which change as the different compounds are created. I have done this with a gradient ramp mapped to particle age. I have 2 different sub-object materials that both change colour over time. This works great when the whole of the instanced object has the same sub-object ID but when there are 2 IDs(as I need) then PFlow applies each complete instanced object one of the 2 sub-object materials instead of applying the correct Material ID to the Sub-Object ID. I have noticed a few points: 1. Using Material Dynamic with "Assign material ID" checked I get the results as listed here. 2. Using Material Dynamic with "Assign material ID" unchecked I get the correct distribution of the Material IDs but the Event age is taken instead of the particle age. I hope this has made sense to someone & that it is solveable (or that there is another coolway to do what I want!) Btw... is it possible to stop the Flow reassigning Material/Object IDs every time a particle dies? Thanks! Elliot

This must've been discussed before, but I just can't find it anywhere in the forum. I was wondering what happen to Position Object+ for max 9? I'm really missing the ability to put 1 particle on 1 vertex... is it discontinued oleg? if it is, what is the other way to have 1 particle on each vertex? cheers

Hello Oleg, is there a file dump version of the freebie ops, for easy network installs? cheers sam

I have simple scene with 400 dancing simple figures (mesh riging by bipet and skin modifier ) the figures duplicate by PF. If I skip to 300 frames PF compute position of figures a long time. If I use on duplicate PArray compute position just real time. Why is PArray faster as PFlow.

Hi everybody Im a new user of particle flow. Im playing with it transforming a teapot in torus. As you can see on this link: http://vince.fx.free.fr/forumfiles/sable01.wmv My question is: Is it possible to slow down the particle when they star to leave the teapot and when the arrive to the torus? instead of a linear speed. Besides, can we have a little "spring effect" when they arrived on the torus? Thanks Very much

Does PFlow cache use PRT file format(same as Krakatoa)?

Hi particlepeople, I've found a couple of old posts relating to this but, with Box 3 and such, I wondered if there is any way to do this now. Basically, I have an animation setup, and I want to rescale time from 500 to 1000 frames. I've tried manually changing all the values I thinka re relevent in the PFlow, but I can't get it to look the same. I suspect my winds with no strength but some turbulence are the cause. Is there any way to get max to render every half frame, or something like that? I've tried Bobo's MaxTRIX script, but it moves my camera around :( . Any ideas? ps. I have both Boxes. Thanks Z.

Hi! Just got the new Cache plugin, but when used together with the Camera Culling op it crashes half way through creating the cache files. Has anyone experienced the same problem? Is there a stack order on how to use these operators. Many thanks Carlos

Oleg, This is a part PF and part MAX9_64 question. OK, today I installed Box3 on all versions MAX8, MAX9_32 and MAX9_64. As part of verifying the authorizing, when installing in MAX9_32, I quickly created a PF Source spewing some particles over 100 frames. I then added the Disk Cache operator just below the Render operator. I updated the Disk Cache and afterwards scrubbed the timeline. The interaction was fast as desired and I was pleased with the apparent speedup. Then I went to click the Play button to let the timeline play back. It played well in most spots but there were 2 or 3 spots where it hesitated and stuttered. Not really knowing what to expect, I just made note of it. Then I did the same thing in MAX9_64 only I then went into the Disk Cache operator and picked the previously saved Disk Cache file. I hit Play and it played back realtime with no apparent hiccups (or if there were any it was very slight) but the visual difference between MAX9_32 and MAX9_64 was very apparent. My question is, I thought MAX9_64 would only provide improvements in handling large scenes... not make anything particularly faster. Yet PF (in this instance seems noticeably faster). This got me started thinking whether there were other advantages that might lure me to move towards 64 faster for production (I was planning to just use MAX9_32 for the time being). Why is PF faster in MAX9_64? This is on a Dual Quad Core system with 8G RAM, x64. Thanks!

Hey, I've build a small Pflow and when I change something on it I get an "action recovery" Event I can not clean up or remove... If I delete it, PFlow creates a new one again and again Display mode changes crash MAX as well. I don't post as a Bug, but maybe it is one ?? :-? http://www.b3d-animations.com/tmp/small_flow.jpg regards, Bandu oh... this recovery event seems not to be a copy of my birth event I've replaced, born timing is different...

I'm animating a vine using a cylinder with a taper and then using a path deform to animate it. I was hoping to add Thorns around the vine using PFLOW. I can't get them to face out along the cylinder and then when I animate the rotation on the Path Deform they stay fixed at there initial rotation, I need them to be fixed but rotating to match the orentation of that polyface? I have Box1 and using max9 at the moment, is it possible? or is it a Box3 upgrade (I'm hoping it is .. I need an excuse through work to buy it :D) I hope I'm saying this correctly .. Thanks in advance.

Hi Oleg, I'd like to know some things. If I buy now box 1 from Turbosquid (i can buy only from there, right?) can I have support from Orbaz, and access of your update thread, or I must update from Turbosquid? If I buy it, may I have both Max 8 and 9 version, or I have to buy 2 licenses? If I buy it now, when Max 10 will come out, may i upgrade without buy it again? ABOUT BOX 3: What is the difference between buy it from here or from turbosquid? Thanks in advance.

Will Box 2 work only together with Ageia hardware? If you don't have Ageia card, box 2 lost performance or don't work at all? Will be the 2 things sell together? How much it'll cost approximately? Last question, how many operator will have box 2 ? Thanks in advance.

Hi I have pflow running along the spline with speed by icon operator constrained to path. But i want to have some rotation of the particles. Standart spin and rotation operators just don't work. (This is a blood stream animation)

Can I with box 1 and 3 do all things i can do whith Thinking particle? Can I calculate the center of mass of one object, and make crowd simulation with biped, as Thinking p. do? I mast buy an solid particle sistem for Max 8-9, what is the best way? Here you can see what you can do with Thinking Particle [url]http://www.cebas.com/products/feature.php?UD=&PID=15&FID=503[/url]

I want to create a pile of boxes where each box is a particle. OK Now I want to create an animation in such a way that the bottom most box comes first then the one which is exactly next to it by order. waiting for your replies Thanks

Sorry about posting the same question on 2 threads, but i saw poor activity on particle general question forum..... I am trying to use finalflares from Cebas with particle flow, but there is a big problem: when i use the option "particle magic" in the setting of finalflares, it assign a random color and intensity to every particle but, after the first particle die, the flares begin to flicker casually. It seems to me that the id of particles change randomly after the first particle die. Any suggestion-fix for this? Thanks!!!

Does anyone have problems using the mapping object operator with vray 1.5 r3? It doesn’t work for me. I know its probably a vray problem because it works in the scanline render. I just wanted to check if anyone have hade problems with it. Thanks!

Hi, I've got a plane with particles sitting on the plane vertex positions. I want these particles to react to a torus scaling up (by animating its radius), moving into another particle event when that happens. I've set up my scene with an UOmniDeflect, and a Collision Test and I was hoping that would trigger the particles. But it seems like the Collision events wont react unless the deflector or the particles are moving. Is that correct? Or can they react to changing meshes as well? Rune

Hi all I have come across a problem where my shape instance object had multisubobject material with two slots (and hence two ids). When the particles enter a new event other than the birthing event, they loose the mat ids and the materials go wayward. I have even tried to put an instance of the shape instance operator in the new event...to no avail. I know that in the user reference it states that the material id's do not flow fromone event to the other...so is there a way to get this working? thanks Paul

Hi, first post here & it's probably a simple question but.... I have a flow travelling along a path using the speed by icon operator. at the moment the flow is taking the thickness of the emitter (it's a circle). What I would like to do is vary the thickness of the flow at various points along the path. Is this possible? cheers!

So, I've seen the web form, but there are no prices for Orbaz Services? So when you submit do you quote the price to fix and go from there? If the solution is easy (forgot a checkbox) is there a fee assessed? Can you fix problems that are pflow related but more of a max problem? Could you give examples of problems you will be willing to solve through the forum versus ones you would point to orbaz services? Khye

In order to have particles homogeneously placed on a sphere, I used the birth texture operator (btw if anyone has a better solution I'm all ears). That works, my animated sphere has plenty of seed stuck on it. However I want to create a fireball so I need particles to spawn for particles locked on the surface. My problem is I keep having particles spawning from the "birth texture operator" icon placed at [0,0,0]. What can I do to have them spawn from the surface of my sphere ? (maybe my seeds don't turn into particules) besides, can I use a invisible map so that the sphere can't be seen ? ANY comment is welcome. thx in advance

In particle box 1 preset i don't have the preset flow. I have the scene in Plugcfg/Particle Flow Preset directory, but seems the preset manager can't read that. I can even save and than load my personal preset, but I don't see the one saved in Particle Flow Preset directory. What can i do?

Hi Everyone, My first post Alan from welling London, I,ve been running thru Oleg's tutorials thankyou very much for those. Im now trying to stick an amount of particles to a metal box then apply a gravity to them and render them out as droplets of water on its surface. My question is, Is there a script that would allow me to generate any given amount from within the box that would then stick to the box surface on contact. Im then going to apply an object instance for each particle. Would appreciate any assistance. Alan9

Hello, I am trying to make an animation and I don't know how to obtain an effect; I have a birt script to generate box particles on the surface of an object. this object is animated. at a certain time the object is moving on the Z ax and it is colliding with a sdefelctor. I want in this moment the particles to be released from the object, and to be afected by forces(gravity) Thanks

Hi, Particles moving in the cylinder rendomly.Speed = 50 rendom 3d. Now i want to do that in the upper layer of the cylinder ,particle moving with speed=150 and lower layer particles moving with speed =50. How can i do ? Plese help Thanking u Alpa

Hello I just wondering if you have any news about whan to release Box:2 for max? Is it far away or can we see it rather soon? You are still working on it I hope? Regards Stefan

I'm posting this to autodesk as well, but I just wanted to check: Both Max 8 and 9: 1) Create a new scene 2) Expand timeline to 1000 3) Add a standard Pflow System 4) Change [i]Birth: Emit Stop[/i] to 1000 -> Particles flow for entire length. 5) Change [i]Birth : Amount[/i] to [i]Birth: Rate[/i] 6) Animate [i]Rate[/i] from 60.0 @ 0f to 0.0 @ 30f - > Emit stops at 30f as expected. 7) In Curve Editor, set out-of-range interpretation to [i]loop[/i]. The effect should be a 'gushing' every 30f. However, you only get this during the keyed frames. 8) Change the key at 30f from 0.0 to 5.0. Scrub the timeline. The effect is as intended until ~ 172f where flow stops for no reason. Edit: A workaround is to animate a spinner or custom attribute as the rate and then wire the parameter to the rate. Really weird. Khye

Is it possible to set particle size to 4x4 pixels for all particles independent from camera->particles distance?

Hi everybody, I'm having trouble with the particle age map and I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if something's wrong with my max. Basically I make the simplest possible flow - just particles moving away from emitter with slight divergence. I add a material Dynamic and use a material which has particle age map in diffuse slot. Render - no colour change, just all particles as color #1. I understand you need to delete the particles at some point to create their "lifespan", so I added an age test fed into a delete. No effect on color. Also tried using the other material operators - no luck. What's going wrong? May just be something simple that I'm overlooking but I can't think of anything. Help please.... Z.

Dear Oleg, dear pFlowers! [url=http://proforma.preset.de/cgtalk/pFlow/magnet/update_question.zip]update_question.zip[/url] This file desn't render? Previews und scrubbing in the viewport work fine, but it only renders the first frame ... Why? Is this no valid setup? And there is a second question. I often instinctively press crtl-s when working with scripts. Now everytime I open max i zillion of duplicate pflow-scripts-and-operators are opened. I this correct? best regards thank you for your patience Georg

Hi guys, i hope someone can help me with this, i'm sure it's quite easy to do but i am a bit stuck. Basically all i want to be able to do is link a Pflow to an object. the basic effect i want to achieve is to have particles that are locked to a surface/object (like the lockbond) but that still operate in their own space and react to forces etc. Imagine a static plane with 10 particles on it. now imagine all those particles doing something on the surface (moving / bouncing / whatever). now i want them to do exactly that, but linked to the plane. so i can animate it and the particles will still do the same movement, keeping their original movement. I have tried the lock/bond and link to emitter options but nothing gives me the right result. i can cheat it in a number of ways but really want it to be setup correctly. I thought i could do it by having a clone of my plane as a reference. if i could reference each particle to the UV's of the first plane(static) and then offset them by the difference of the UV's of the new plane (animated). Any help would be really appreciated. Cheers Matt

Hy, I am new to this forum, and at first: Hello to all of you ! I currently became stuck in an approach to generate nice looking cigarette Smoke based on the idea of "particle driven surface animation". My attempt is to animate Pflow particles and attach each vertex of a plane to each particle. Using the turbulence in the wind spacewarp, the particles become nicely distorted. Currently i am using mesher and pointcache to convert the particles to Objects the SkinWrap Modifier can access. This Modifier is used to "bind" the Plane Vertexes to the particles..Well, its a bad workaround but it works. Only Problem is, it only works with one single Pflow event, because the ParticleMesh (a single face in my case) is renumbered everytime, when a particle is send to the next event. Which means that, the SkinWrap modifier will become heavily confused...ends up, with a completely distorted mesh. So i have to controll all particle movements with animated forces, which is quite "oldschool" and will never end up in a nice animation. The plane sticks to my particles and becomes really nice distorted. Adding a relax and Turbosmooth will make it look really cool. Using Falloff and Texture Shaders, you can get pretty nice smoke. -> in a still.. because i cant use send-out events, etc.... So, my question is, if anyone has a idea, how to solve this problem...or, if Orbaz Tools may have a solution for this... Thanks so far, Regards, Thomaskl http://www.thomasklieber.de Here is a rendered still that you can get an idea of how it might look: [img]http://www.thomasklieber.de/Rauchstill.jpg[/img]

Hi Oleg, can you tell me when you expect the first release of the particle freebies for 3dsmax 9 (32bit), please? Thanks chris

I want to represent an animated mesh with little quads on each vert, so only the particle cloud is moving. I found a birthscript here, to create Particles on each vertex of a mesh, but dunno how to make them sticky. further more the orientation of the particles should follow the meshtopology regarding edgeloops. can't be too hard, huh? thanks in advance Michael kinda like this: [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/1705508/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/1705508/Stickyparticles.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi, I was wondering if there was any advantage to having something like Pflow as a standalone app as well as a plugin? Obviously you wouldn't have the overhead of Max running, and it could be streamlined for particle use, maybe it could then be piped back into Max for rendering or even have a renderer built in? I guess the main thing would be getting mesh and animation data in, and replicating the various space warps - or does this sound like more trouble than it's worth? Thanks, Steve

Hi, I've been using object motion blur on particles to get some nice water effects recently (fast spinning cubes). I just tried Mental Ray's motion blur in Max 9, and noticed that rotation doesn't contribute to motion blur at all. I've only tried it with Pcloud so far, but has anyone come across this before? Thanks, Steve

I'm looking to re-create a portion of the Lock/Bond operator in Box3 to get a "skin wrap" type effect. The problem with Lock/Bond is that the object must have extremely high tesselation when particles are far away from the surface, presumably because the normals of the surface are evaluated only at the vertices. I can get the closest point, and the distance to that point, and the normal of that point, but I can't seem to get anything that will give me orientation to the normal. As in tangent/bi-tangent. Is something that would allow me to position a particle relative to a animated surface point?

I'm having a bit of a problem with the disk cache. Maybe I'm not understanding how this is working, but I've saved out a .pfc sequence, but I can't figure out how to load it. There's no UI item for locking the cache or setting to to read only, and I can't seem to be able to get the cache to actually load. When I get to a frame that has a cache file valid, all my particles disappear and are not replaced with the cached ones. Is there a way to load the cache from one system onto another? I'm thinking maybe like the Initial State operator. I have a file where the particles are evaluated, and I want to put them into a scene that I will render from, but it's just not working. - Chad

I am trying to understand the proper Image Motion Blur usage here. I have an animation of a race car going off the track then hitting the wall. All is setup as desired and as the race car skids across the grass opacity mapped particles are emitted as dust. When the car hits the wall, simple object particles are emitted as debris. The dust rises and chunks fly. All scene objects are set to render with Image Motion Blur. Problem is, when I applied the freebie Camera Image Motion Blur to my events cuz I thought I should, the resulting motion of the particles is wrong compared to what I setup visually originally. The dust barely rises therefore the opacity mapped particles stay low intersecting the ground plane showing artifacts of this. The debris particle motion is also wrong as it flys a small distance rather than the large distance that was setup. The question's are: 1. Do I actually need the freebie CIMB on? Would it render OK without it? 2. If I do need it on, since it alters the setup motion, do I need to drastically increase those motion values in order to get back to what I had setup originally? Thanks!

I have been doing some R&D with simcloth and find it to be an awesome candidate for experimentation with particle flow. When you connect a simcloth sim as a position object combined with a lock-bond you can generate all sorts of secondary motion effects (especially with object motion blur). Now it is cooler out here up in Southern Ontario, Canada (actually way south of Toronto, Montreal or Boston, USA) I will be putting up some tuts I also found some very interesting other uses for Initial State! Once our Avolution trade show demo is done for November 15th I will have more time after work (in the darkness known as a Canadian autumn) to post these at Orbaz. I have been watching of late; but I have been learning something called a Mac G5 (and Final Cut Pro, Motion, DVD Studio etc) so the time for particles has been less. So stayed tuned..... :wink: Mark Raymond Pigott

First off I'd like to thank Oleg for such a wonderful particle tool, I've been using an in-house proprietary tool to create particle effects for the last year and switching over to Particle flow is like coming from a wasteland into a lush orchard. Now on to business... My goal with this scene is to spawn a variety of arcane symbols that drift up then fade away before they expire. I painted a single texture map and used a mix of cropping/placement and multi sub object materials to divide the various parts. In my file are two examples of attempts I made with the materials in order to set something up that can fade over time using the Particle Age Material. My dilema using dynamic material operator is when I switch on "reset Particle Age" the desired fade out occurs, but then it treats the set as an animated texture swapping my little symbols at random. When I use sub- Material rotoscoping the various material ids are distributed well, they dont shift anymore but I lose the fade. I hope my ramblings make sense, I'm up late trying to complete a project but have found myself hitting a wall. Any ideas? [url=http://www.grutch.com/images/arcane.zip][b]CLICK ME[/b][/url] for the file containing the details. Thanks! Grutch

Oleg Do you have an estimate on when your max9 versions will be available? Not trying to rush you, just anxious :) Thanks.

Hi Are there any demo versions available to test out Clay Studio Pro and Particle Studio? I see the Toolbox demos, but nothing for these....:cry: I'm eager to see how they work - especially Clay Studio. Sounds cool! Thanks Z.

Hello I'm trying to brake apart an object into particles and reassemble agian into another.. I also want the shape of the particle to be a different animated object, like shape instance...If I'm correect I may need orbaz tool box #3 to acomplish this... right? or ist box#1 Its something that an old plugin called sandblaster did.. remember that one? If this is achivable with the standard tools, well any info and help would be appreciated Thank you Esteban

Need to emit a piece of geometry a leaf growning on a branch using a particle system to emit from a surface thats easy, but my leaves need to grow from the root align around the tube shape (they don't they all face wacked directions) and I would love if I could keep them facing to cam. Any ideas out there? Thanks!

I noticed ina thread that someone was talking about the Box 2 Teaser Vids. Where are these located? When does box 2 come out? What wiil be the prices? Thanks Paul

I was playing around with the lock/bond operator, as a means of getting objects to travel around on the surface of an animated object. It's working pretty well, except that the rotation of the particles are prone to "snapping to" in order to match the normals of the faces they're travelling over. There's an example here: [url]http://www.adamwatkins.com/LockBond_snappingRotation.zip[/url] I would've thought that increasing dampening would decrease the sharpness of this "snapping to" behavior, but I haven't found any settings that work yet. Any thoughts?

Hi all I have a situation where i need 12 omni lights to move along 'pivot to pivot' with particles. Getting them to move along is fine. There is a simple script in the maxscript help that show you how to do this, also one of allan mckay's tutorials shows this too. The problem is: the none of the objects are actually alligned exactly 'pivot to pivot' with their corresponding particle! In this situation this is a big issue. If anyone could help me force the objects to behave as i have asked them to, it would be a great help. Cheers in advance

I have a bizzare reflection problem that seems to be related to PFlow. I have a camera that flies down to ocean level. The ocean is simply a plane object with a Raytrace Map for reflection. There are PFlow opacity mapped (special shape plus) clouds up in the sky which the camera sees a little bit of as it flys almost straight down towards the ocean. When it gets to a certain level, it has already flown past all the clouds but it can still see the clouds in the reflection of the ocean. (I should note that the camera doesn't fly directly through the particle clouds but rather there is a strategic hole that it flys down through so the clouds pass nearby). The problem is after rendering this, during the whole flydown sequence, there is this wierd flashing or strobing that seems to occur at regular intervals (about every 30 frames). I have isolated this to one PFSource of clouds (there are 2 sets of clouds in the scene). After the camera is below the clouds and looking at the ocean and seeing the cloud reflections, it's as though some cloud particles disappear for say one frame and then reappear because the reflections disappear and then reappear. I have looked closely at the PFlow clouds with particles 100% visible and can't see any disappearing or reappearing. But when I hide the PFlow clouds entirely and render a couple of comparison frames, the problem goes away so I know it is related somehow to the PFlow clouds. Earlier, I was experimenting with the Camera Cull operator but then later realized that the out-of-view clouds were disappearing from my reflections so I removed it. Could this be somehow having an influence even after it's gone? Thanks for any ideas!

This is the only webboard that I frequent where as I move my mouse around the topics listed, each of the topics highlight in succession and stay highlighted. It is really distracting to look at and I'm wondering if anyone else experiences this with this board? Is there a setting that makes it do this? Can I turn it off? Thanks!

I have a mesh consisting of a bunch of elements which represent crude clouds. When using the Position Object to position particles across these cloud mesh elements using either vertices or surface or whatever, particles are not positioned on all clouds until I cross some numeric threshold of particles. For example, if I set the birth rate to 100 particles, the particles are bunched up on some clouds and none on other clouds. If I increase the rate to say 500 particles, all cloud elements do get particles but there are still a massive number bunched up on some clouds and few on others. I would like to have one particle per cloud until all clouds have one particle then start adding the remaining particles to the clouds in an orderly fashion. That way, all clouds are 'bulked up' in an even fashion. Is there a way to do this with PFlow or Box1? Thanks!

Hi. I have a situation where i have animated the position and colour of the flags on a radial gradient ramp to get the effect I am after BUT it wont sync by particle age. Each particle uses the material based on absoulte time I've tried using a particle age map and having a start, middle and end version of my gradient ramp as sub maps of the PAge map but all this does is animate between each as if they were a static image rather than moving the flags like I need them to. i am using pflow with a material dynamic I have done some looking and the only 'sync by particle age' option i know of in a map is in a bitmap which doesnt make the animation very procedural if i have to keep rendering out a gradient ramp to use in the bitmap slot EDIT: I've now experimented with rendering out the gradient ramp map to a .mov so i can use the 'sync by particle age' option within the bitmap's time rollout but it is STILL animated by absolute time! Any help would be much appreciated - maybe a script somewhere does this ???

From time to time I've come across a significant slowdown when linking a pflow source to a point-helper. Are there any specific do/don't with regards to linking pflow stuff? Earlier today I linked several pflow sources to unique point helpers. I then took each respective pointhelper and linked it to a root node. Animating these helpers seemed much slower than if I simply animated each of the pf sources directly. I looked around the forum and the docs but haven't come across anything yet. I have again relinked pflow sources to unique point helpers, but did not link them all to a root node. This seemed to keep the speed acceptable. I wanted to be able to link so that I could exactly track the motion of a character, but the speed was not acceptable. thanks - .jeremy

Hi all, I'm having an issue here with Max crashing when I try render a pflow scene twice (i.e. doing test renders). The first time it renders ok, then when I hit 'render' again, it goes through and meshes my pflow, but when it's time to actually render the tiles, it crashes. I'm rendering with Mental Ray and am using Box#3 (Cache Disk operator and a couple Dataflows). I've been able to narrow it down to absolutely being the pflow, since when I render without it, it goes along fine. So, does anyone have any tips on how to go about "debugging" it and trying to get it so I can finish this project? -Chris (mods: sorry if this is in the wrong forum--this kind of a general particles question, but also involves Box#3)

I am creating ocean foam where the ocean meets the beach and I'm trying to use V-Ray to render. I have an Island object that emits the particles from the selected faces at water level and immediately after the particles are emitted, gravity pushes them right down onto a flat plane deflector object with high friction and they stop. The particles are opacity mapped Particle Plus cubes and I have an animated scale which basically flattens the cubes in World Z with a constant value and varies the XY so the particles grow/shrink over time. The end visual result works well for my needs but there is a problem (naturally!). Because all the particles are the same thickness in Z and because they overlap one another, well... they overlap one another! This is not a problem in itself as the scanline renderer renders these overlapping particles just fine. But V-Ray currently has a bug with regard to rendering these opacity mapped, overlapping particles properly (as the scanline can do). I am trying to see if I can find a way to have the particles not overlap in Z when they collide and stop on the deflector. In other words, to have one particle stop on the deflector and the next adjacent particle stop above the deflector, the next on the deflector, the next above the deflector, etc. So the end result is particles that are offset from each other and therefore not co-incident so V-Ray will be able to render them properly. Is there any way to create some kind of stand-off distance for the deflector that would alternate particle position in Z? Thanks!

Does Box #3 have some magic to allow the control of multiple nonPF objects within its scope. Here's an example to compare and contrast with Without pflow create say 1000 box objects (max does not do this very fast; maily due to the undo buffer) So, even without pflow Max seems to have slowed down Go up a notch write a script op to control the objects with standard pflow and if you have a month of tuesdays you have an animation Now with box #3; does the cache disk operator mitigate the geometry overload that Max sees right off the bat?

Hello all, the Triangle won an Emmy for outstanding special effects, Particle Flow and Oleg's support were invaluable to the completion of several of the most complex shots. So thanks and keep up with the great tools! you can read a little about the triangle here http://www.ifmagazine.com/new.asp?article=3299 http://www.emmys.org/awards/2006pt/awards/sve.php cheers

Hi all, I just read about a situation where some dual processor and dual core systems fail to use all of the processor power available when rendering. A suggested solution was to use a script which forces the full usage. I just wondered if a similar solution is available for PFlow. When I have a PFlow system updating, I can see it's only using one of my processors. Is there any way to make it use both? The speed increase would be really handy on big scenes. Thanks Z.

Hello I just wondering when you are planning to get box2 out? Regards Stefan

pls help in expand sphere like a cloth :?: :?:

Hi, Does anyone know of any methods of using the zdepth in an opacity map material. Basicaly what I need is a way to fade the intersections on facing transparent particles. In more modern computergames pixel shaders can be written that use the zbuffer depth to change the opacity of a pixel that is about to be drawn. As a facing particle intersects a solid object the zdepth of the existing pixel becomes closer to the zdepth of the pixel that is about to be drawn, as the values become closer the output pixel becomes more transparent. The end result being that there is no visable hard edge when a facing particle is intersecting a solid object. Does anyone know of a way to do this preferably with the standard max renderer, or if that cant be done there can it work with mental ray? Is there a plugin that allows a user to write a pixelshader within a standard max material? Thanks FXmonkey

Hi, this is only indirectly linked to particles, but I thought I'd throw it into the ring. Does anyone think it would be possible/feasible to have a map which is affected by space warps, e.g. Wind Turbulence/Drag etc? I thought it would be quite cool to have a volume light/afterburn combustion effect which distorts based on space warps. There is a Wind Daemon in Afterburn but it doesn't have turbulence. John Burnett wrote a visualiser object which interprets space warps, but I was thinking more along his warp texture which pulls and stretches maps along the force of the influence of the warp. Any thoughts? Cheers Steve

Hi, I've been experimenting with facing particles and animated textures for water spray. I've set up a couple of sub-materials with different IFLs, but when I add a delete operator, the animation seems to flicker wildly towards the end of the animation. If I remove the delete operator it's OK. Any ideas? Originally I thought it might be down to one material using a different number of frames to the other. Should the dynamic material be OK if the number of frames differs from material to material? Thanks, Steve

Does Particle Studio work with 3ds max 8?

We have a Geosphere which moves upwards through a plain, starting completely below and finishing completely above the plain. We are triggering animated particles on the surface of the sphere so they start to grow outward from the surface as soon as the bit of surface they sit on touches the plain. The growth is perpendicular to the surface normal. It works great for the particles on the upper hemisphere but those on the lower hemisphere grow from the surface towards the centre of the geosphere (ie they grow the wrong way). We have tried selecting the lower hemisphere and flipping the normals, but this has no effect. Oleg, we've sent the scene to the upload email address for you to look at. If anyone else knows of this issue, any help would be much appreciated. Cheers Z.

hi all we are looking for a uk based freelance max artist who knows particle flow and has production experience using it. the gig is for SkySports at BSkyb for a high profile sponsorship job, which will have MAJOR on air time. Rates to be discussed. Cheers paul please contact me at both pgill@rocketmail.com and paul.gill@bskyb.com

Hi. I'm creating a PF script that manipulates particle values over time. Basicaly particle components like scale, wind resistance, particle age time warp (for animated textures) and a few other things. I have already writen code for an interpolation function which operates using set data which I hope to eventualy create from a graph, simalar to those used in the output section of materials. What I need help with is creating a UI for PF scripts, I understand that this type of script is procedural but is there any way of having part of a script dedicated to a UI for creating data that would be used within a procedural part of the script? Is there any examples or tutorials for creating PF scripts with UI's? Ive done lots of standard utility MaxScripts with UI's in the past but I'm not sure of the best way to do this for PF scripts.. or if its even possable. One way Ive considered is having a seperate maxscript utility that allows a user to edit the graphs storing the data in either a blank anim track or as userdefined data on the PFsource object. Then the PF script might just use whatever data is there. Idealy though I'd like the PF script to do all that by itself. Any help would be apreciated. And I'll be sharing the script when its done for anyone that needs that kind of control over there particles. _____________ FxMonkey _____________

Hey all, In my never ending quest to have floating particles form a word from another word I was wondering if the Birth Texture could be used. I was thinking of possibly have a texture animated of the word from nothing and have it reveal more and more of the 'white' of the word so over 100 frames or something a word texture appears and the birth texture would be used to map the particles to the animated texture as it reveals the wording? Does that sound like something that could work and if so what would be the process to actually implement it.. i.e. the animated texture etc. Many thanks.

Every time I try to load up Particle Studio in Max, it says something about protection executables, what does this mean?

hey guys ust curious if there is some kinda plug in for maya's particles like pflow? i know maya particle system pretty well now.. it just takes a while to get stuff done with it. ( compared to pflow)

I have problems with it: Is there an incompatibility between the two options "Density by Material" and "Distinct Points only" ? So when i check "Density by Material" it works fine. Now checking both of them, the "Distinct Points only" overrides the "Density by Material"-effect. Is there a solution/patch to have the two options work together ? (controlling the position with "Density by Material" AND getting the "Distinct Points only"-effect.)

Dear Oleg, is this possible with the particle flow and/or box? if want to restrict the area where particles stick to a object by a map or MatID on this object. Something like particles 'flowing' over a plane and sticking to predefined areas of that plane. I saw that lock/bond is very helpfull for such tasks, but I am not sure if there is a map option. thank you. Georg

Hi all -- Here's what I'd like to do, but cant get to work: I've got a bunch of particles distributed uniformly in my flow using "speed by icon" to orbit on a closed spline. As time passes, I'd like these particles to sorta "condense" into a few clumps that are continuing to orbit. My experiments with the find target operator haven't worked for me. Can anyone provide some insight on how to do this (preferably without Maxscript)? Thanks!

I have a relatively simple system setup where I want tiles to spin based on a collision test. Everything is working fine but it seems the particles are shifting slightly after being passed through the collision test and onto the next event. Anybody have any ideas why this might be happening? Here is a preview: [url]http://intrinsia.net/transfers/flipper.mov[/url] As you can see by the preview the end particles are not evenly spaced anymore. Also the file can be found here:[url]http://intrinsia.net/transfers/flipper.zip[/url]

Particle Flow Tools: Box#3 demo version will be available at the same time as the official release of Box#3. To get automatic notification when the demo version is available for download, please register yourself at the Orbaz forum, and follow to this link: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=576&watch=topic The demo version can be used as a "personal learning edition". Thanks, Oleg B.

I've set up a flow where particles are birthed within the volume of a sphere. A data operator then changes the scale based on distance from the surface of the sphere. However, when I animate the surface (e.g scale down the sphere) the particle position doesn't change, and particles are soon outside the sphere. How can I keep them within my shape? I assume this can be done with box 3 but I'm just scratching the surface and I'm stuck! Anyone help? Z.

Hello everyone, I need some help with some particles that are very bold. I have a system that runs along a speed by icon (which follows a path to make a trail) into a deflector (for a collision test) and starts a new event which then runs into another deflector and once more. So thats three deflectors and one pflow. Now I 'stop gradually' one of the events at around frame 325 so that half the particles go off and do their thing while the other half stops in its tracks. Now I need the ones that are stopped to follow a new path but when I create a new event from the particles that are stopped by the stop gradually test they move in a group in way that resembles the new speed by icon which follows a new path. I mightn't be making much sense so please take a look at the two images I posted. They might help a bit. If anyone has any idea what I'm talking about please reply. Thanks James [url=http://upload3.postimage.org/188917/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload3.postimage.org/188917/jasjnr_pflow_prob.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://upload3.postimage.org/188954/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload3.postimage.org/188954/jasjnr_pflow_prob2.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi, Can i have noisey movement in PF that emmits particles from icon? How? Thanking u, Alpa :lol:

Hi, (...my first Post...) Ok. What i wanna get is the thin known from the Standard-Particlesystems as "Die after collision". In fact, i am looking for a way that kills these Particles, that collide with each other. I´ve tried a Deflector with the PFlow-Source and a Collision-test, pointing at that Deflector. But it didn´t work :cry: . Can someone tell me the right way to get Paricles killed, when they collide ?

It seems PFlow ignores the Turbosmooth "Render Iterations" option completely. The "Off in viewport" modifier function doesn't appear to work either. I've tested this in both max 7 sp1 and max 8 sp2. Is this a known issue?

hi everyone, i am having a problem with the fragmentation method explained in http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=326&highlight=fracture in the beginning, everything worked fine. now suddenly, my saved files give weird results, when I open them, and I can not recreate the whole fragmentation process. when i start the script, all objects imediately transform weirdly (on the first frame) I followed all the steps in the thread, pflow on/off, editing fragments without using tm undefined, seems not to be the cause. any ideas? I didn't install any new plugins or knowingly changed anything in max thx

I have a scene that requires a lengthy calculation. Even when I dial the particle viewport multiplier down to 0 it seems to take just as long to calculate 100%. Is there any other way to only have the particles calculate on rendering only? Khye

Hello, I noticed my Box 1 p flow preset op is empty. Is there a way I can get those that shipped with box 1 back. thx

I am trying to make matrix streaming code. I would like to do it by having a dynamic material on the particle trails that randomly changes to the different symbols. The problem is i would like to have the trails fade with age. Is there a script or something so that i can have particle age and have it cycle throught the symbols. So far i tried making a multi/sub-object material, then put particle age in the opacity slots for the materials, but it doesn't fade with the age of the particles. If i choose animated texture then the trails do fade, but the sybols change every frame and i have no over control how fast they change. I dont know maxscript real well so any help is much appreciated.

I just wanted to find out if the physics system used to make the Box 2 teaser vids will actually be part of Box 2, or will it be a separate product/purchase? Cheers.

I have a flow where I have particles (blood cells) flowing through an artery. There is a render event and blood cell event: RENDER BLOOD CELLS Inside the blood cells event there is a 'Collision' operator which looks to a UOmniflector>mesh of the inside of the artery. The emitter is inside the artery and as the particles are emitted, they travel through the inside of the artery and bounce off the artery walls as they should. At the end when the particles leave the artery, I want to delete them. I have created a box, and a UOmniflector>box. I added a 'Send Out' operator to the bottom of the BLOOD CELLS event which goes to another event with a 'Collision' operator pointing to the box UOF. The output of this 'Collision' goes to a 'Delete' event. Problem is, my order must be wacked because I can't get the particles to delete. Can someone tell me the proper order/placement to first collide with the artery walls then collide with the kill box to delete the particles? Thanks!

hi everyone, is there a way to make the group selection operator act like a "soft selection" i played around with blending the selection edge by using multiple different sized selections and threw in an age test to scramble the edges even more. still, i can see sharp edges when using high particle counts. any ideas? thanks

I've got so many questions about the fate of Box#2 that I have to confess - I lost it playing poker in Montreal... But seriously now :) We gave the development priority to [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=464]Box#3[/url] in order to have more build-in functionality in Box#2 later. You may know about the "script wiring" ability of some Particle Flow operators. Namely, you can right-click on Force or Keep Apart operator in Particle View and select 'Use Script Wiring' option. As a result, the operator gains additional rollout with script wiring options. For Force operator, for example, you can use Script Float channel to define individual influence for each particle. The problem with this "script wiring" approach is the scarcity of the script data channels - you have one of each Integer, Float, Vector and Matrix data channels. Therefore, with the complex logic of particle interaction you run out of the data channels pretty fast. You can stuff 4 vectors or 12 floats into the matrix channel but still... [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=464]Box#3[/url] resolves this issue completely. You have unlimited number of data channels, with the variety of types: Boolean, integer, float, time, vector, quaternion, matrix and more. The data channels are created by the 'Output New' sub-operator, and then they can be used by other sub-operators. These data channels can also be used for information transfer between different Data Operators, and even between different particle systems! All in all, we thought that it would be nice for the operators in Box#2 to work with the custom data channels in the manner similar to the "script wiring" in the standard Particle Flow. But for that the [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=464]Box#3[/url] has to be implemented first, as you can see. Thanks, Oleg B. P.S. This is the info that was first given at the CGTalk forum earlier. But since not too many people went through the announcement there, I copied the message here.

I wish to use lock bond on an animated surface, without particle reacting motion of surface, but reating to a force, like Wind perturbation. In fact I want to create ship wake foam, particles following animated surface of the sea and moving around because of the wind. But not because of the sea motion! Is that clear ?? :roll: again :particles keep on animated surface, only moving due to a wind.

Hello I have a scene where I need to use the clay clone geometry so I can apply FFD modifiers to the clay surface. Also I'm using the mental ray renderer for Max 8. When I render a sequence of frames say 0-2000 the clay clone geometry does not update. whatever the shape of the first frame was it just stays that way. However if I render the same sequence with the the clay suface (not clay clone) all is well..... Everything appears to work fine in the interface and if I render say frame 20 or 1500 by themselves I get the right results for those single frames. Any ideas ??

1) Create a pflow. 2) Add a Scale operator set to 90%, relative successive BELOW the shape operator as the help file suggests. 3) Check scale on the shape operator. 4) The viewport displays as you would expect but render some of the later frames and it won't match the viewport. Khye

Has any one played with PF on a dual core machine? If so, does it speed up the updating... I am working on a set-up with 2000 lights calling particle flow for all aspects of motion and attributes, and to cold-move to say frame 270 takes forever, as the script operator is setting the position , multiplier, exclude, etc for each of the 2000 lights. I figure a 2 processor dual-core would be much faster, but I am kinda hoping one of my PF brethren in running such a system... I am stuck on a lowly Dual CPU AMD 2.2Ghz with 2 Gig of Ram!

When will #Box3 demo be available to download?

This is sort of a TIP: From my experience, I have noticed that clean-up Particles in the Box #1 Utility will not display any anomalies with the flow UNLESS you have two flows in the scene. In order to avail yourself our knowing how many EVENTS it really is cleaning I set up an un-connected PF Flow called NULL PF, so that when I click on my UTILITY/CLEAN-UP in the Global Event (normally called PF RENDER #01) that it will give me numerical feedback) In other words, if you have only one flow, whether or not you have any anomalies in your flows and you only have one flow the utility will report back "cleaning 0 events", but if you add in the null PF and reload the scene it will say "cleaning "n" events"

Hello, I am trying to create a animation of a cell dividing into two..however the two new cells will be different colors. I can't seem to figure out how to handle the color issue with claystudio pro. I hope I'm not missing something obvious. Thanks in advance, Doug

Hi Oleg Will there be a freebies version for max 8, as I'm not able to install the other versions. Thank you.

Hello all! Basically I am trying to simulate an avalanche flow in PF... I am doing PostGrad research in Architecture and dealing with extreme natural phenomena... Since I'm pretty hopeless with PF does anyone possibly know about accurately modelling avalanche dynamics in PF or refer me to a relevant source??? I've been wasting loads of valuable time trying... Any suggestions would be largly appreciated... and if i could be of any help in regards to arch..but naah..boring!!!

Hi guys, I need to test something out here and I'm looking for any files that anyone could share. I particularly looking for scenes that use a LOT of memmory, the more the better. Any kind of scene, but it helps if they are self contained i.e. no bitmaps or super fat models needed. Send any that you have to Chris@cg-academy.net These are for testing purposes, nothing commercial and will be kept completely confidential. Cheers

Hi guys, I have made a simple scene, where facing particles are stoped after collision with plane. And I have used Static Material operator to assign different material for each of particles. The strange thing is that after collision particles Id's are changing, even if Static Material is instanced between main events, which is strange. How to solve this situation, and to keep particles ID's between events? Btw, in the same manner the shape facing randomness changes after collision. Thanks. Here is the scene: http://rapidshare.de/files/7773352/kaka3d.rar.html

I was watching the "bloodmoon" movie for the box 3 release and was wondering If that type of animation is possible to do now with pflow I was thinking it would look cool to make that like cracking ice on a river or pond, anyone have any ideas how this could be accomplished?

hello all, so does anyone know if it is possible to pipe(read transfer something) particles generated in a different system (like real flow or even parray) into particle flow. thx sam k

Can Box #1 be installed in Max8? I remember that there was an update patch fo max7. Is there one for Max8 as well? Andrea

I don't know where to get started. I would like to have an animated material drive the rotation of particles. I have a plane populated with flat cubes at each vert with white on one side, and black on the other. I want them to flip acording to an animated black and white material. Thanks! -C

When you fab up a birth script, is it automatically sub-frame accurate; much like the standard birth operator?

Hrm... been unlucky in getting a net render stable with lock-bond on. Works fine on single system but with net render it's a jerkey movment of particles. Any thoughts welcome !:) TIA

I just got pflow toolbox 1 and tried installing it, but when i open max to take advantage of the goodness i just bought...DUPLICATE DLO ERROR!!! That's a bad thing. Anyone else run into this, or better yet, anyone know how to make this evil go away so's i can 'splode me some stuff? thanks -brandon

ok....going a little nuts...hopefully this is something basic overlooked....I am redirecting particles via "find target". I have a material frequency assigned to the global node which is assigning ids and using a multi-sub-object material. The problem is that the ids get reassigned whenever they go to a new event therefore changing materials but I want them to stay the same throughout. THis also happens with collisions (instead of targets) and I have tested static material with the same results.Any help would be much appreciated. Justin Mitchell Boing! LLC

Any way to control opacity on a per particle basis? Ala Maya. -C

Any easy way to get particles to bank based on their speed space follow? I'm guessing it's a scripting solution...so if anyone has conquered this, I could sure use some help here. :) Thanks in advance. G

I have sort of a stupid problem here. Not sure if it's max or pflow related, but here goes: I have a scene with 750 frames and particles being affected all the way though. Nothing fancy, but if I click the time slider from frame 0 to frame 750, naturally, it will take some time to get there. When I make a preview, and max is done generating it and playing the animation, and I click the max window to go back to work, the window won't activate, but I can see pflow calculating the particles up to the frame max is currently set on - which happens to be the last frame of the animation.. due to the preview I just rendered I guess. And the ESC key has no effect because the max window is not selected. So I'm left with the choice of either killing the max process or waiting 5-7 minutes for it to complete (in this case.. could be considerably worse). I've tried using task manager for "bring to front" and "switch to" with no luck. Any bright ideas? It doesn't happen _everytime_, but when it does I feel like biting off a finger. :/

Hello, I'm looking for a solution to create easily wakes and foam made by a boat on sea. And looking for the right plug-in to acheive that. My last idea was to "paint" some particles on the moving surface of the sea (simple plane+noise modifier). That why I'm looking for more information about "Spay master", painting particule on a surface is what I want. But it seems that this product is not anymore available. Do you think that I can acheive this effect using PF tools and Particle Paint? To have an idea of what I want, I've uploaded some images. [img]http://www.silex.net/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=485&g2_serialNumber=1[/img] [img]http://www.silex.net/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=487&g2_serialNumber=1[/img] Thank for your help and sorry for my poor english Christophe

I've built a pretty simple system using a keep apart, position object+, Mapping Object, and some simple forces. I have 12,000 particles in my scene. I have been able to render this out fine over the last 2 days but today it will render 2 or 3 frames, then 1 black frame, and crash while transforming Vertices for the next frame. Other times it won't even get to render the first frame. The scene renders fine with 1,000 particles instead of the 12,000 but this is not a viable solution. I had hoped to get 30,000 stable for my final render, and render 3 passes of differently seeded systems to get my final effect. What can I do to remove the instabilities from this flow? Thanks for your time, -Chris

I've got a pflow system that I'm sending into a mesher and i'm getting some wierd results. I was applying motionblur to the mesher and when events were triggered in the p system I'd get these huge streaks in the motion blur on the mesher. I put a poly select on the mesher to see what was happening during the events as interpreted by the mesher and I saw that the vertex order was changing. Even though the particles really don't change position from event to event the mesher is changing the order of how they are built. Is this a pflow problem or a mesher problem? V Miller

When will ParticleFlow Box2 be released? What will it cost? Are there any discount to Box1 users? Regards Stefan

I have read the help and it says place Shape facing after the position op, but I am wondering if the correct way for shape facing is the have it after a shape op (i.e shape plus). I have tried it before the shape op and it seems to override the shape plus unless the scale button is set. Please advise. [/i]

Is there a way to utilize the .bin sequences that RealFlow spits out and effect them with forces, or spawn from them, or anything like that through PFlow? Cheers T

Is there any way to mimic reassembling an object as in Particle Studio or Sandblaster? Ideally, I'd want to have each particle of a simulation go to and stick to the vertices of a target object with some control, front->back, top-> bottom, etc. Something like a controllable "Go To Position" to complement GoToRoation. Anyone? Anyone? :)

Hi Oleg, your work totally charms me. I admire you alot. But I heard something and I thought I should ask you if that's correct. Did you work at discreet? Did they fire you then? Is this the reason why you started youw own company? Furthermore is this the reason why pflow updates [box 1, box 2, box 2...] are not included in future max versions as a standard? Kinda like cloth fx exist and discreet bought it and gave it to subscription users which will be included in 3dsmax 8. I hope this questions dont offend you, because I am with you. And it is YOU who makes the greatest particle system ever, either at discreet or not. Regards...

HI ! Been trying to make brick structures with PF and Birth Texture etal. Can't seem to get it to work, the shapes intersect, trying to find a way to make bricks set with no intersections. The look desired is much like Greeble effects. ANY input would be welcome :D TIA

I working on an animation where I am generating floor tiles from instanced geometry, and using a collision test to trigger the tiles to flip over. The idea is that as I sweep a deflector through the tiles they rotate in sequence to reveal their undersides. It's all working fine except that I need one particle to spawn at each vertex, currently even with seperation turned on I still get overlaps on some vertices. For example, the distribution object has 36 vertices but I have to spawn much more particles than that to get at least one on each vertex. Our TD wrote this birth script to overcome this issue, and it works perfectly until the deflector touches the first particle and causes Max to crash: [quote]on channelsused pcont do ( pcont.useposition = true pcont.usetime = true ) on proceed pcont do ( meshobj = $teapot01 --your mesh here! meshobj_numv = meshobj.numverts for i = 1 to meshobj_numv do ( if ((pcont.numparticles()) <= meshobj_numv) do ( pcont.addparticle() pcont.particletime = 0f --your start time here! pcont.particleindex = i pcont.particleposition = (getvert meshobj i) ) ) )[/quote] Is there any way of spawning a single particle per vertex, and failing that is there anything obvious in the script that would cause Max to crash? A JPG of my flow is here: [url]http://gd5.cn/stuff/pflow.jpg[/url] And I have a test render here that shows the effect: [url]http://gd5.cn/stuff/flipping.mov[/url] Overlapping particles show up as opaque. I can't leave the overlapping particles in the final shot as the final geometry uses refraction and, even without that problem, I am using an age test to flip each tile randomly a few frames after the collider hits them so the overlapping particles flip out of synch and intersect..

I have a setup where I'm making a sphere disappear over time using a slice modifier, and I want particles to emit from where it's vanishing. So I added a volume select modifier to select the verts on the sphere, but I'm not getting any particles showing up. I've tried different options, but just can't get it working. If I turn off the delete invalid particles option from the position by object operator, I get particles emitting from all over the sphere, but none at all when I turn it back on. Can someone take a look at the scene and see if you can get it to work? Max 7 file, and it should be pretty obvious what's going on when you open it. [url]http://jhaywood.com/ftp/dissappearingAct_002.zip[/url]

This is probably pretty simple, and I thought I figured it out once before, but I'm now having a hard time getting my particles to not jump to a new set of scale values after a collision. Here's the basic setup... Event01: birth, speed by surface, display geometry, force, shape cube, scale with non-proportional variation, collision to Event02 Event02: stop, display geometry I've tried instancing the shape and scale operators in both events, moving them to the global event, changing the scale to each of the various 'Type:' options, etc. What's the prefered setup to keep a shape from changing scale after going to a new event? I'm sure I'm just doing something wrong here.

I have a scene file where I have about 15 PF Sources which has a complex (for me anyway) Particle View layout. I have the particles doing what I want and want to work on other aspects of the scene. I hide all the PF Source objects and then I use the 'Turn Off All' function in PV to disable everything. Problem is, when I then trying to scroll the time slider in my scene I get extremely slow updating and the clock icon appears at my cursor. If I delete all of the PF Sources from my scene, my time slider scrolls fast like lightning so I know it is related to PF. Isn't there a way to totally disable PF in a scene to speed up interaction? Thanks!

Is there a way to load custom object groups into its interface ? tia

Two questions about this forum 1.) Is it somehow possible to attach/upload imagea and/or .max scene files to a posting? 2.) Is the notification mechanism functional? I have turned it on for every message I posted here so far (including this one) but I never got any notification. The email address in my profile is fully functional AFAIK. Thanks! -- MartinB

IS THIS POSSIBLE with pflow ? I can't get past a few million parts. Box one goes farther than stock max system, but still millions short at this time. ck it out at > imagesavant.com Any thoughts welcome on pushing MAX parts this hard! BEST

1)Once you learn particle flow, you can make cooler things as well as make them faster (something the boss likes) 2)The event driven nature of the beast, allows a more "what if" type of changes (it's been very rare for me to "one time" a particle flow setup, but man, when you do...) 3) I want to bypass "reactor", which in IMHO is conter-intuitive and through scritping, birth scripts and pos objects in event driven scenes, make reactor seem redundant! Weekend time........logging off :D

When you go to Utilities\More\Particle Flow Utility\Reset Particle Flow I was wondering if there is a way to write a custom scene that this calls. For example my 3dsmax.ini and the Reset Particle Flow do not match as my 3dsmax.ini has the following turned off Depot Desciption Use Dynamic Names and Track Update\Particle Count turned ON just curious, maybe a maxscript?

My learning process w/Max ,may be out of the norm,as I consider myself fairly adept w/static compositions...decent w/the material pane,lighting etc....yet entirely novice w/scripting and dynamics...just purchased this plug from TS,and I'm really disappointed w/the training videos...I mean they obviously cover some good content-I watched them all...but they left something essential for me-how to get out the gate w/the plug...I mean I do have it initialized,triggered something that prompted me to enter the reg-authorization number...but the first vid-which purports it will tell me "where to find things" pops a panel-in which all this scripting and video content operates called "Particle View"...His arrow is down on his perspective pane-and suddenly out of nowhere this panel emerges...Think of how frustrating that is-I can't follow along at all without that.. Is there a pdf? Heretofore whenever I have needed particles-which is often...I've made particles in Discreet's Combustion-either as targa trans for postwork...or directly as postwork on image in Combustion...see gallery of "gmonkai" at deviantart.com...can do all that but cannot open this "particle flow" panel everyone is using for this stuff...please someone help me out? Also to whatever particle wizard or wizards deign to answer these novice questions...I loaded some presets -for example "the nebulae"...what do I need to render something?lol!..have added lights and material,and no go...Help,please? Will post my rating at TS soon... It's driving me nuts...When I write Photoshop tuts-I start with "baby step" assumptions-so they may reach everyone-and not subjective tech adepts only...I watch this video and he pops the panel magically from the rocket a second time...I peruse them all,I peruse this site...nowhere is an ample demo on just how to open this panel-so a new user might get out the gate... I expect big learning curves..but the omission of basics is just alenating... okay,got view...to any checking this site on same prob:Create panel > Geometry > Particle Systems > Object Type rollout > Click PF Source. > Setup rollout > Click Particle View (or press 6). okay,anyone responding please get me to texturing,and lighting...or whatever will make these visible in render.. Well,as now I've fiddled hrs away-I'm going to Combustion for the particles I need for current workflow...If anyone will condescend to explain-how do I get a material on this nebulae...I have added "Material Dynamic","Material Frequency","Mapping" and "Mapping Object"...where do I insert-in third subpanel?...I have added lights...nothing shows up in render...people need a pdf for beginning on this stuff bad...get me out the gate reasonably-and I'll write one...

The details are here: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=190 Thanks, Oleg B.

Oleg, whats the time table for box 2 and what will you be adding? V Miller

Is it possible to let facing particles "look" into the actual used POV, as it is in the old particle system (which even works with the perspective view)? It's painful, to change the look at target every time you change the camera. Michael

Hi I want to do particles with a fade away texture and do not get it :x I animated the opacity of my texture from frame 40-60. But it only works absolut, not per particle age. I used a Material Dynamic Op to assign the Material. Michael

As I wrote already in the discreet support forum, I can't control the size of facing particles with a scale op and I still do not get what's wrong. No matter what size I set for the particles, as soon as i place a scale op into the event, they shrink to a minimum birth size (even with scaling 100%) with normal particles it works as you should see in the pic. tetra particles are 3 units big, facing particles are 3.000.000 (!) units in size. [img]http://www.ground-studios.de/stuff/facingParticles.gif[/img] the file (max7): [url]http://www.ground-studios.de/stuff/Pflow_scaling_facingP.zip[/url] thanks for help Michael

I don't think I have seen this posted yet. And if there is already a way to do this, PLEASE tell :) It would be nice if there was a way to copy and paste one list to another. For example, I have a long list of objects in the Position Object operator and I want it in the Lock/Bond or Speed by Surface operators. I think it would even be cool if you could instance those lists.

I was thinking of trying an old film trick and doing some of my animation at 120 frames per second in max, and then dropping the frame frame down to 30fps in post. Now, if you have an integration step of say render =1/2 half frame at 30 fps, does that mean the integration step would have to be 1/2 x4 or 1/8 frame, or is PF frame speed independant?

Hello, I am currently generating mesh and UV mapping of that mesh on the fly for each particle in a scene and I have it set up so that the mesh generation occurs once on the first frame and is then stored in the shape channel. Do the mapping coordinates get stored with the mesh as well? I noticed the ".useMapping" flag and was wondering if perhaps the mapping was a seperate channel. I can get it to render fine if I generate the mesh and UV mapping on every frame, but when I set it to only generate mesh on the first frame, I get a "Missing Map Coordinates" error when I try to render. Thank you very much for the great support. Nelson

Is there any way to animate Birth Amount? For example I want to have 80000 in frame 0 and when it goes to frame 630 I want to birth 160000. Is that posible?

Hello, I am using the new freebie "Camera Culling" and was wondering if there was any way to make it not execute any script operators for particles that are not in the camera view. Thanks, Nelson Wang

The following is a quick and dirty scene I fabbed up after work that shows you can use the Particle Flow Box #1 Tools to add secondary motion information to Reactor scenes. Layer <HIDE> contains the original Reactor created geometry Layer <0> contains the pflow objects There are two flows ..the first one is a birth script with a global recursive LOCK BOND (that is, the lock bond callls the very geometry that is in the birth script boxes2-28... this flow gives primary mirrored animation of the reactor scene. The second flow uses the INITIAL STATE that reads the animtion of the first flow...this is then sent to a local recursive LOCK BOND that acts as a buffer for the geometry that is sent to the SPAWN BY TRAVEL , DELETE BY AGE, and SCALE BY AGE.... If anyone else has any suggestions or uses, please don't hesitate to comment on this scene.... here is the screen shot http://avolution.com/outgoing/GRAB.JPG here is the scene http://avolution.com/outgoing/PF_REACTOR_FX.max

Hi how do i register for the downloads section??

Is it possible to have an error in a Birth Script that causes particle to show up in the Vewport, but not in the rendering? Here is the script...I hacked away at the one that was there, and for some reason I cannot get my head around a way to have the particles spawn at a rate any less then 1 per frame ( I think the script by default does it every 8 ticks or so). So I got it to do 1 per frame and I am splitting only the ones I want (every 5th in my case) into the rest of the flow. If someone could show me the correct way to birth script a frame rates over 1 per frame as well, I would appriciate it. Thanks. But the problem is that they show up just fine in the viewport, butthey dont render. Everything seems to be connected right. I have multiple flows sharing the same Render Operator, and they all work except the ones with this Birth Script (actually the other script is for the left gun). on ChannelsUsed pCont do ( pCont.useTime = true pCont.useAge = true ) on Init pCont do ( ) on Proceed pCont do ( gtR = $'Point_Gun Target_R'.position.controller.position_constraint.weight as array if (amax gtR) > 20 then ( t1 = pCont.getTimeStart() as float t2 = pCont.getTimeEnd() as float if (t1 < 0) then (t1 = 0) if (t2 < 300*160) do -- 300 frames ( for i in (t1/160+1) to (t2/160) do ( curTime = 160*i as float pCont.AddParticle() pCont.particleIndex = pCont.NumParticles() -- last particle that was added pCont.particleTime = curTime/160 pCont.particleAge = 0 ) ) )--End If ) on Release pCont do ( )

I read about the point renderers in the 'particles around us' section. So since that's unavailable commercially, how do you render things like thin smoke. AB Is great for billowy, dense gas but fails in this regard . . .or else I'm naive about some settings. I saw a good coffee cup animation on CGTalk that had the rendering percent at 1500% to achieve a nice effect and the Box 01 memory clean up would obviously improve performance, but has anyone else found out a method that wasn't so memory intensive? Khye

can you only get PFLow tools from turbosquid? I just tried 5 times to purchase, errors everytime.... I can't even call them for support

hey oleg, how did you make the Mapping Object 'Wipes' scene in the gallery? it's awesome

Last week Avolution picked up a HD editing suite on a Mac Dual P5 with FCP and Combustion. I haven't even cracked open the program yet, but I was wondering if I could render my particles with simple opacitty boxes, material ids etc, and export the entire sequence as an *.rpf and have combustion do all the fire effects, etc right now everything is done in max, but is it much faster to have an external progtram do the post work for particle flow a total newbie to combustion :shock:

I love the grouping abilities in Tools#1, they've helped immensely on my current project, but.... I'm not getting results from some of the groups I'm creating and modifiying. Is there a limit to how many will work in a system or event? (Wish: I'd like to see the "Group Selection Operator" be a list - why have only 1 group available per Operator entry? - I've got about 25 of each in one event [GrpSel ops and GrpOp ops]). Also, when I split out this giant event of Grp Selection ops and Group Operator ops into 2 events, only the first event set worked. (Keeping related GrpSelect ops and GrpOp ops together of course). Thanks for any info, - Ron

Is it possible to have one pf source "sense" when another pf source has collided with a group select and then have this activated pf spawn particles to create itself. So far I have set up a fragmented text letter "A", the text holds stable for 30 frames and is then is blown by a kaos wind into a group select that references a mesh object (no render) letter "B" This then sends out a spawn and random speed and then the A Event dies by particle age. Is it possible to have Event Letter "B" detect that "A" has hit the group select and then start spawning into the new shape "B"? I am trying to fake a sandblaster, and I hope the answer lies with the group operator, but even after reading the help file this operator confused the heck out of me thanks

For super quick and dirty looped animations try this. For this example, i will set up falling snow The emitter starts above camera view, and the group select lives below the camera view. Set up about 100 particles over 300 frames. (-300 to 0) Set up a gentle speed 50 meters, variation 25 meters Use a shape plus "square" with mapping on, a rotate set to 90 degrees X, and shape 50meters or so with a variation of 25 meters (these units are TOTALLY dependant on units, and obviously dependant on camera distance, which in my case the target was 0,0,0 and the camera was at 0,-1300,0) Opacity map a snowflake to a material dynamic (just in case you want to run age fades or color changes) Set up a position icon set to allow all the flakes to fall from above camera view (I made mine so it streched about 20% past either the left and right safeframes, and sent it back 500 meters away from the camera Y ) Set up a wind say strength .25 turb .25 scale and other item (memory gone) to 0.05 or so. As the speed allows all the particles to be past the camera after 10 seconds, set up a select group-split group combo to catch all the off-camera snowflakes. Send this to a spawn, delete parent and loop the output back to the input. Preroll the birth from -300 to 0 ,but set the scene length to be from 0 to whenever (you could even set up an initial state, but for 100 particles there is not really any overhead) This way you can rig a 600 frame animation (in my case a "join us for New Years 2005 casino ad") with only 100 particles and this is quite memory efficient and fast.

I went back into work tonight to try and debug a scene that simply wouldn't work, even though i had used a simalar technology on a piece last week. After hours of debugging, the only difference between the pflows was that in the working scene the stl check on all 1500 odd fragments used for the birth script said "no errors" and therefor this scene was flawless. Now the scene with the errors on the fragments reported "open edges" on the fragments. So, just as a heads up, I recommend that if you do fragmentation for birth scripts that you run an STL CHECK in max BEFORE you write the birth script. I don't quite know why birth scripts dislike open edges, but for the 5 hours of debug time, it certainly is worth checking, to save hours of hmmmmmmmmmm.

Damn, is there any way i could make the initial state out of PArray object fragments? Im assumeing that initial state is restrained to pflow? ANy chance of this changeing in an upgrade? I doubt it will need to once fragmentation tools come. Can I make a script to tell init state to use a PArray?

Hey, anyone tell me how to get PFlow tool objects such as particle painter into my quads. This goes for anyother plugin as well. Like the ABurn explode daemon. I like haveing that stuff in my quads. Hate going through that damn convoluted command panel. much <3 depleteD

Their any possible way to apply for beta testing upcoming pflow box sets?

This really isn't a question, but more of an observation. It seems particle flow is faster at updating a scene when you use a birth script for geometry creation, rather than a birth event, a position object, a speed by surface, etc... Is this due to the fewer steps one has to calculate when the geometry is there, defined in a script.....

I can't see the spline or the circle that should indicate the brush size while dragging a Freehand spline. Is it a setting that I'm missing? I'm working with max7, could this be the reason? Also, in max 7 the [6] shortcut doesn't work any more. I haven't changed the keyboard shortcuts. Any ideas? Andrea

When is Box 2 gonna be released? Im so hyped and I could seriosuly use it for my project that im doing over the next year and half for my portfolio when I graduate. Man, when PFlow can fragment geometry man.... talk about power in a can. It will be the ultimate particle solution.

i have had particle flow box#1 for almost two weeks now and i think it is awesome. trying to do more r&d now it is winter here in Southern Ontario and hopefully will be uploading some examples shortly the coolest thing i discovered tonight is that you can use a lock/bond lock to object as a "counterbalance" to a force oparator For example set up a standard flow anywhere, a lock bond and a force, and a 10x10unit grid (or any size) in your scene point the emission of evento1 for a force with say force=0.5 turb=.5 scale=0.05 and freq =0.05 and also point to a lock/bond set to lock to object with a position strength set from 25-75% (shake well for best results) the lock/bond will act as an sine-wave damping factor to the force very very cool

The issue #59 of 3D World magazine [url=http://www.3dworldmag.com]www.3dworldmag.com[/url] has a review of Particle Flow Tools: Box#1. You can download the review [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/reviews/TDW59particle.pdf]here[/url] (110KB). Thanks, Oleg B.

i know this is more of a maxscript concept but it does involve particles [u]event render and event #1[/u] lets say you set up just the default emitter with birth start=0 birth end=30 number of particles=200 view/render amount=100% you then use a send/out or agetest>particleage=0 to event #2 [u] event #2[/u] this event contains an agetest=30 and a delete by particle age=30 you wire the output to spawn delete parent (event 3) and wire the ouput back to the input of event #2 in effect creating a never ending loop of 200 particles now as every particles leaves event #3 (age =30) and comes back to event #2 (age=0) you can then set up a particle age material for these events particles flow and the material editor are totally aware of particle age, but if you set up a glow in the render effects with a particle age entered into one of the falloff or color slots contained in the setup of the glow it is not aware of the particle aging going on in the pflow event. it would be cool if there was a way of telling the render effects to adjust its glow parameters based on the particle age (or even other particle properties such as speed, scale, rotation relative to ther face normal, etc) if this was the case, you could have totally different render effects DEPENDANT upon what happens in particle flow... just a late night thought... mark raymond pigott avolution multimedia

The 3 operators that you are giving out as Freebies, do they work with 3dsmax 7? ThanX :)

Hi, I just want to start out by saying awesome job with particle flow. Now for my question, I was wondering how to use the placement paint with find target. I need a way place my particles into rows and columns after they have found their target. In the Operator Description, it says "...setup targets for Find Target operator," and I was wondering if that was I needed. Thanks, Nelson

Just something I have noticed...I have been working on some scenes using a fair amount of particles and when rendering them through Brazil; they seem to update over and over again. it gives the little readout in the bottom of the Max UI saying that the particles are updating and once it reaches 100% it goes through and updates them again. (seems to update 5 times for 5 events, 6 times for 6 events so on and so on...) Yet when using scanline it just renders through them with no updating needed...just wondering if you had any similar experiences with this issue. thanks

where can one find the v1.01 of the box #1 the one on turbosquid is v 1.00000

Hi, I'm writing a custom file exporter for 3DS Max (using the c++ sdk). I would like to export the radius of the clay spline knots but I haven't figured out how to access this data from the sdk, could you please help me? Regards /Brinck

Oleg, Hey man, was just browsing around your site and ran across the forums here. Great idea to have a place for particle freaks to get together! I hope it becomes a success! Todd Peterson