Hi there! i'm looking for a way to spawn particles preordered like birth group does. For example: + fracture a sphere with rayfire and group the fractures + setting up a simple pflow tree with normal spheres (not fractured) fallling to the ground + when these spheres hit the ground they are replaced by the fractured sphere with all chunks as individual particles bouncing around. is this possible? Thanks a lot everybody!

Hi all. So its time for another post about vray proxies in particle flow. I have bobos uninstance script and it works great. HOWEVER thats not going tocut it for what im doing. Essentially I am destroying a city using particle flow and alot of buildings falling that were pre shattered and convereted into vray proxies. The uninstancer works fine with proxies as it copys the original proxy. However I do not want a random proxy. I want a specific one. So i am using box 3 to generate a random number and store it to pflows integer channel. i also have a float channel for whether or not the animation for destruction should have started or not. I was planning on using maxscript to access this data in my uninstancer to place the correct instance where i wanted. UNFORTUNATELY you cannot access the float or integer script channel. I then realized i am only rotating in the z direction. So figured i would place my instance # and my changed float variable into the x and y channels of the rotation. This now brings on vector math! YAY So i have attached some screen shots trying my logic. I am confused as to what is going on. As a test i put 0 in as an integer into both x and y. and saw a logic result. they were both 0. However when i plug 0 into one channel. No channels have a 0 out attribute. Am i missing something fundamental about the rotation values / real numbers here? In my unisntancer i am just pulling the z channel out of the rotation values and then setting the x + y to 0. :twisted: I did this exact method to get particles as nulls into after effects particular for a project a month ago in maya. Is there really no easy way to get custom data types out of particles in pflow?

hey, i am trying to modify the bloodmoon operator by oleg which gives a nice growth effect, also it has nice feature that it stops to grow when it reaches other particles etc. unfortunately this only creates a sphere, id like to have it grow on a surface of an object... i have tried everything i could think of but did not get it to work, i looked at placing particles on vertices to determine positions, which helped me understanding creating positions of objects, i managed to make an operator which creates particles closestest to a surface, also random surface, but neither worked in the bloodmoon operator, which should have one starting point and then instead of forming a sphere, form the surface around an object if anyone can help me understand and modify this operator would be greatly appreciated thanks ian

Hi, Is there a way to determine which shape instance a particle resembles and use that in further calculations? I have made an operator which works perfectly for shape instances with only one particle geometry object, but I need to do calculations based on the correct geometry if I want it working with multiple shapes. Any ideas?

what‘s the meaning of"scale product“ in Function sub-OP? What is the mathematical meaning of a ”scale product“? Which condition should I use it? thank you for who knows and tells ! :o

Hi! I'm trying to assign different shapes to my particles based on a vertex color that I painted on the surface the particles are placed upon. As you can see in the screenshot I'm trying to read the vertex color from the nearest vertex and deciding which shape to assign based on a threshold. But somehow the order of the particles gets mixed up and the shapes are being assigned in a seemingly random fashion. The randomness is almost exactly the same when I substitute the closest vertex index with the birth index of the particles (They are being placed at the objects vertices based upon their birth index). Any idea how to solve my problem or do it in a better way? regards, Henning :?:

Hey all, We use Maya and houdini here at the studio as well as 3ds max. In maya there is an Nconstraint called "attract to matching mesh" which is kinda like a Lock/Bond but deforms Ncloth/Nparticle as well. It has a glue value that can be setup to dictate when the piece lose their constraint. [b]Is there anything like this in max/pflow? We have a character that we need to fracture. Below is quick summary of the workflow in maya [/b] animate character > prefracture character in tpose > use animation rig to deform prefracture to animation > duplicate prefracture pieces & Ncontrain "attract to matching mesh" duplicates to initial prefracture > then use forces / collisions to break shatter parts of the character. the thing is the prefractured pieces need to be in the deformed state of to the animation as they get broken off and all the pieces aren't getting broken off at the same time.

Hello everyone. I have a problem with the "find the target." I need that would be the distance between the target position and particle position greater than 1 and less than 10, for example. I use a condition that compares posotion particles and the target point position, if it is true it works fine, but if it false particles fly to 0 0 0)). Any idea? Can i go back and set new seed if condition false ?

I need to do a system particle almost procedural, and place the particles like the picture below, I think maybe the first particles born orderly and then the others maybe can be spawning. [img]http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/1369/calculogenerico.jpg[/img] The particles have been emited in a object like "teapot" and follow the speed by surface and rotation normal, that operations I did it, I copy my flow below. [img]http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1233/flujospeednormal.jpg[/img] [img]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4013/flujorotationnormal.jpg[/img] Please can you help me to build my flow, to place the particles like the picture ? :) Thank you Sorry for my poor English

Hi there, Just another newbie question :) this time about the 'Use Post-Cache Operators' option in the Cache Disk operator. To my understanding, what I need to do is cache my particles to disk, and then I can apply further changes to the cached particles my adding operators to the Post-Cache operator list. Is this correct? I was working on a simple test where I've cached a basic particle system, and I've added a standard Shape operator in the Post-Cache list to give the cached particles geometry, however the geometry doesn't appear in the viewport. Is there something that I'm doing wrong? I've attached the max file to this post. Thanks again!

Hi there, I'm new to PFlow Tools Box 3, and doing some tests. I'm just wondering how would you set up an operator so that it checks the Z Position of particles in the event and sends them to the next event if it is higher than a specific value? Thanks!

Hey, I'm currently using the position object with the separation value at 0.1. Is there a box 3 equivalent? as this is single threaded and very slow :P I'm trying to Frost mesh a bunch of prefractered geo so I have to cover the fragments with particles with even distribution.

Hey fellows, i have some hard time to achieve such a simple task. Still trying to get my head arounf Box3. Imagine you got a cylinder and a position object. Then i spread my spheres onto the cylinder. Now i want to colorize the spheres depending on the Position Z Axis. Bottom = black // Top = white. As far as i know, i can only achieve that inside the viewport with the vertex color. Is that true? Would be nice to get into the Display Operator with Box3. Still i'm struggling with the Dataflow in order to get what i want. cheers naik

Hey guys, i have tested the example which comes with Box3 "Displace Particle" and so far it's clear. But there is one thing i don't understand. check this pic [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/189/displaceparticle.jpg/][img]http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2184/displaceparticle.jpg[/img][/URL] Uploaded with [URL=http://imageshack.us]ImageShack.us[/URL][/img] So as you can see in the example file the closest point on surface goes into the Output New operator. And then you have to create an Input Custom in order to pipe in the Output new op. But that's what i don't understand. I mean why can't i just take the ouput of the closest point on surface op and use it to wire it with the Point Normal and the Point Color? Why do i have to make this redundant step with the Output New and Custom Input? Maybe someone can shed some light into this.

I need to multiply the particle time by a value (lets say 0.1) I cannot multiply time so I convert the time to a Real. This works sortof - It seems to convert the framenumber to an integer? then I multiply by 0.1 and get 0. For every particle. I haven't found a workaround yet. I need to adjust the time to feed into an animated noise Any ideas? Rhys.

Hello, I have a question regarding vector addition. What I did not understand about it is when is this used and for what? For example vector subtraction is used for finding the distance between two points. So vector addition is only used for moving a particle from one place to another? I actually want to know in which cases do I need to use it. I hope I made myself clear with my question and perhaps for some of you sounds a little silly but I am not to good to math and maybe one can make me understand. Thank you very much

hey all, I'm fairly new to box 3. I'm just wondering if BOX 3 has anything like the curve operator from krakatoa magmaflow or a ramp used in maya particles to alter how values from 0-1 are used.

Hi How can I produce Particle with intervals? It should be 30 particles in frame 0-5, then another 30 particles in frame 20-25 and so on... The Birth Icon should be animated. I can do this with several Events with BirthStream in each Event and animate the position Object, but its should be ease with Box3!!! Thanks Nataliia Khirna

I have a setup that I want to do with bricks/blocks that come together to form different shapes, first from nothing they come together to form a bike (made of blocks), then another set forms a car (made of the same blocks), these then both breakup to from a house (you get the idea). I have tried using the physxswitch file http://www.orbaz.com/visualguide/particleflowtools/box2/PhysXSwitch.html But it has no physx when the wall rebuilds, which I really need, and when I add it the target objects dont keep their shape. I also have no idea how to get it to have 2 or 3 different "Birth Groups" ie vector position an rotation data for multiple targets and different Birthgroups as the source. Johnny has told me I could do it with box 3 or thinking particles. Now we already have box 2. so I would prefer to go the box 3 route. But we are on a very tight deadline and I need to know if it is possible. Any help, examples or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Gavin

Hi Im new here and to get deep in to the Box 3 I would like to ask you this question Where I can find deeper Explanation for Sup Operators. Is there is a book or something i can buy. Thanks Nataliia

Hi, I'm making a dandelion simulation, where I use box#3 to turn off phys x simulation on the seeds closest to the stem (by selection) to have them swinging in the wind using box#2. Is there a way to reactivate physx simulation for these particles without using the time on time off interval on the operator? I want to pass them on to a new event by a collision test, to control which groups of dandelion seeds will get torn off the stem, but the selected seeds are still unaffected by force, and using time on time off interval doesn't give the result I'm looking for. Cheers!

Hi, I'm not sure why this is happening, but the Cache disk operator (build 1.53) is randomly crashing Max every once in a while when i update the cache file, not even on heavy tasks, the systems i'm working with now are rather simple, i'm just caching in order to send out to my renderfarm. Sometimes the caching simply does not even start when i keep the "update viewport" option checked. I'm running Max 2011 x64 on a Toshiba Qosmio X500 with 8GB of ram and a Nvidia GF460M at the moment. I understand it could be anything, but if anyone is having similar problems, please let me hear about it. Cheers, A.

How to delete a custom particle nodes Particles with BOX3 custom node. A file? Where to file? Thank you!

I was looking for a way to ease particles and had started to wire up the different easing functions (quad in, quad out, quad in/out, cubic,etc) but before I got too far I wanted to make sure this hadn't already been done, or if there was a better way. I know Find Target has some easing functionality so it's something that has been done inside of pflow. I wanted to make sure there isn't a generic ease function in maxscript or somewhere in a data subop that I missed. Khye

Hi guys, This is probably an easy one but I'm just looking at Box#3 evaluation for the first time (probably gonna buy it this week!) and I can't figure something out. I have a particle system set up so that particles travel from one object to another with a find target. Now I would like these particles to scale from their original scale to (for example) 30% of their original size by the time they hit their find target. I did have something kind of working where I was using closest point by surface to get the distance from the particles original object placement mesh, using the data icon distance to icon function and then doing a little math to get the value to output a scale average (I'm recalling this from memory as I'm not in front of that setup at the mo). This was nearly doing what I wanted apart from a few things; - imagine the particles are spawned on a sphere, there is a near and far side of this sphere relative to their find target and as the particles from the far side came close to the nearside of this sphere they would get slightly larger in scale again of course due to the "closest point by surface". Now this would also happen if I used another method such as distance from pivot. Is there a method which would avoid this behaviour? - after the particles hit their "far" distance set by the data icons size, they would then start to increase in scale again. I'm sure you can set a condition like if X>29 then X=30 from that point on regardless, but I can't figure out how to do this within this data operator (or would I have to do a separate data test?). I guess that in order for this to be reusable I should probably not use a data icon to set the far distance but rather a world distance value based on the distance the particle has travelled, is this possible? would there be a better way? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Rob

I have one Cache Disk file (particles_0000.pfc) what was rendered in frame 0. Now I want to use the same cache file in rest 999 frames (particle system doesn't update). How can I use one particles_0000.pfc file without copying it to the rest 999 frames? particles_0000.pfc size is 15 Mb.

I need help to optimize a simple scene. As a start I took SizeByColor.max which comes with Box#3. In this example particle size changing regarding a reference plane color. Now I have some additional changes: 1. I need to change particles color regarding plane color. 2. I need particles to stick to the plane because I need to rotate them in a space. 3. I need 1,000,000 particles per plane 4. I have to render 2000 frames 5. At the end I will have 23 similar particle systems which I need to render together (23,000,000 particles totaly). I need to generate size and color for particles only once. And I need ability to rotate them in a space. I have attached scene what I created so far. The problem with this scene is that PF recalculates the system with each frame and it takes forever to update frame 1500 or 2000. How can I "freeze" or bake particles after they have been generated? I tried to use Cache Disk and Initial State operators without success. Help me, please. [url=http://postimage.org/image/5147n1ok/][img]http://s3.postimage.org/5147n1ok/Viewport.jpg[/img][/url]

i've got a quick test working with a prefractured geo. teapot explodes and then reassembles itself using findtarget script vector and Transform matrix with a go to rotation. What i'd like to do is have the object reassemble itself to an animated teapot as opposed to just return to the original pos/rot of the prefractured teapot geo. any help would be greatly appreciated.

How could I restart particle age with an operator once they enter the event?

Hi guys! Can somebody, who have experience with usage of functions: -Deflection -Interpolation -Orthogonalization -Scalar Product -Scale Product (not find what is it at all) say for what situation they can be applied or show some example ?

Hi. Is there any way to get data from a certain particle by its ID? For example I want to get speed vector from particle #15. How can I get it?

Hmm... I have already created similar topic tonight but can't find it. Why using external uniqueness seed parameters produce this strange results? All of the particles are placing at the world origin instead of new random position over the surface... Is it bug or I'm doing something wrong?

Basically I have feather system locked to an animated emitter in the first event. I do stuff to it, then send it out to a second event where of course the feathers don't stick to the animated mesh anymore. dataOp in first event : I read the position vector, point position relative to the mesh, output script vector. dataOp in second event : read script vector read mesh' object pivot position if new in event output the script vector as a position vector, otherwise, output script vector + object pivot position how can I make it work ?... thx

hi again :) I'm trying to make age test analog through the box#3 flow. It seems to be easy but I have some difficulties. If I set the standard age test operator with start age=200 and variation=200 then all my particles are sent out along exact 400 frames. Which flow in box#3 could make some results? If I compare particle age with some random value between 0 and 400 with exact match, then I have only some of my particles which passed out along my 400 frames timeline. If I compare particle age with some interval near random value then I have a much quicker sending out but it still not the same work which standard particle age does. Any ideas how to make standard age test analog?

Hi, how can I lock particles within the object volume where topology changes. For example I have an animated sphere which simply scales up along one of axis. Standard pflow operator "position object" with "location: volume" and "lock on emitter" option turned on does exact what I need, but I have to do same with box#3. Can you help me?

hi, is there any way i could make particles compatible with lights, so that i pick them instead of an object, so each particle would be an omni light for example?

I'm just beginning to learn Box #3 and am excited about the possibilities, but some oddities are impeding my progress. Data Operators do not seem to be updating properly. In this video I have recorded you can see right off the bat that no particles will appear in the freshly loaded scene until the Data Op is toggled off then on again. Furthermore, when changing the value of a SubOp while parked on any given frame, it leaves residual effects. password is: orbaz http://vimeo.com/25210364 There has also been instances when all particles suddenly disappear for no reason, only to return when Data Op is toggled. Toggling the Data Op (or scrubbing in reverse actually) is the only way I can find to bring the particles back to their proper form. This has happened in multiple projects under various circumstances. On a different project, I was having inconsistent rendering issues which I solved by caching my particle sources, but I do not wish to cache every time I make a change. Is it something I am doing wrong inside the Data Operator, or is there some other auto-update setting I am not aware of? I am in Max 2011 x64 on Windows 7 x64. Thanks so much for your time and assistance, I much appreciate it!

Is it possible to have a auto-hide feature for the operators control panel, so that only visible are parameters exposed when selecting data icons in the command panel or inside pflow. Would be a nice little addition --

Hi. Is there any way to calculate sum of average sizes of neighbor particles in certain radius? For example I have a particle and 3 neighbor particles in 50 mm search radius. Each of them has a different size. I have to calculate sum of their sizes for my purposes. Is it possible?

hi, could anyone help me- i would like to have a spawn by travel distance, but only with particles that reach a certain amount of speed how could this be done? thanks

I can't use the cache disk operator without Max crashing. I can add the operator to a flow, but as soon as I select it in the flow Max dies. I'm using Windows XP, 3ds max 2011(32 bit) and Box#3 1.53. Any ideas what could be causing this? Thanks in advance!

Hi everybody! Is it possible to make with box#3: 1) uniform distribution of particles by the surface. 2) keep uniformity while geometry deforms 3) particle distribution based on gradient map Also very interesting how to make "keep apart operator" analog with the box#3 instruments.

I have particles continuosly checking their distance to the closest helper in a group. What I'd like to get/store is the absolute time the first time a condition related to that distance becomes true. For example, if the distance checked for is A - store the absolute time of the first occurence of the actual distance being A - if the helpers move out of range and move back later, still keep that initial value. The limitation is that the particles have to stay in one event to satisfy some other requirements of the flow. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Hi. Is there any way to make condition like "if a=0 then..." As i see, standard condition node makes only "less or greater" comparison.

Hi. I have a data operator which contains two standard outputs. The first one is acceleration vector (simulates gravity), the second one is a speed vector with the zero vector connected to it. In the outputs order "speed vector" is set to second so as I thought that should cause no movement of particle at all. But I see slow movement. Much slower than the "speed vector out" is off, but they are moving along the acceleration direction. Why thats working this way? And how can I stop the particles within my data operator? I understand that I could turn off acceleration but this vector is a gravity and it should be turned on always.

Hi. Can you explain how acceleration standard input works? I make simple flow with standard gravity force, but acceleration vector and acceleration magnitude shows zero results. I also tried to stick particles to object through position to object operator and then animated that object... but acceleration standard input still return 0 acceleration.

Howdy Yall, This is probably not a bug. But maybe you can tell me why it won't work... I have a unfolded/flattened cardboard box that is skinned to a basic bone hierarchy. The box has a custom attributes modifier on top. And a slider that is wired to the y rotation of the front bone. slider works fine... everything is dandy.. I create a particle system with 1 particle. Using box 3 I define the shape (my unfolded box) with the shape operator. I check my slider on the box still working... Then I continue to expose the slider/custom attribute by adding a parameter control to my shape operator. And kaboom, the slider/wire on the original object no longer work, then my pflow depot starts not updating and doing really strange things! And then the rest of max goes downhill...causing lots of other strange bugs. I posted the scene file. Oleg this probably is a limitation? Something happening when i am cloning objects/particles??? Thanks Nick

Hi! I have a camera mapped krakatoa prt sequence that i would like to freeze the colors of. currently, the particles look as though there is a movie playing on them. instead, what i would like to do is get the particles to stay the color they are when they are born, for the duration of their lives. will box 3 allow me to code this? Any help would be most appreciated!

could anyone help me create a box3 operator that behaves like the speed by icon operator? only that it would allow multiple icons/or objects to be used speed by surface behaves alot different, would be really useful to have multiple icon "targets" to create speed with in one event, any help is appreciated!

maybe someone could help me, i love the randomwalk operator and was wondering how one could change it so that particles arent noisily flying away, but displaced in the nice randomwalk manner and instead of flying away, continually displaced in their current position so the motion of the randomwalk noise would be there but just in its place, like an animated offset of a procedural noise map would have a simlar effect in that they dont fly away but only the displacement itself is animated thanks for any help!

Hi. Look at this simple scene. At the particle`s birth moment I set acceleration vector to it and send out them to the next event, where display data operator shows the speed magnitude of each particle. As I thought this flow should set initial acceleration to each particle so they must fly as if the speed vector was set. But in fact I see random speed magnitude at each particle. And farther those speeds depends on integration step parameter and number of particles so 48 and 49 amount of particles gives pretty different results. Why does this work this way? I don`t understand logic of this behavior. [url=http://postimage.org/image/359u0fo04/][img]http://s3.postimage.org/359u0fo04/test1.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://postimage.org/image/35a0ml1z8/][img]http://s3.postimage.org/35a0ml1z8/test2.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://postimage.org/image/35a5l73gk/][img]http://s3.postimage.org/35a5l73gk/test3.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi everybody! I was looking for a way to let particles attract each other. i found an old script by peter watje: particle gravity (can be found at maxplugins) it is doing the job really well. unfortunatly it is only working on the legacy particles. when i use it as a force in pflow max crashes. does anybody know how to achieve the same effect with box 3 ? or is there a way to get particle gravity working within pflow? thanks for any reply! philipp

hey! how could i use features like Relative Successive as in the Scale Operator in a box3 operator with other values, like position or acceleration, so that values would increase per frame depending on the start value? thanks

hi, im kinda missing a delete by event age, and not particle age, how could i make this in box3? (instead of using another age test to send to another event) thanks, ian

hi, can anyone help me create an operator, which passes on each particle one frame (or half-frame) at a time? So that the particles will be passed to the next Event based on their IDs for one after the other after each frame? thanks,, ian

hi guys,i need help here. i used data oprator to give particles orientation,and when i set particle display geometry,i see it is right.they has correct orientation.then i use PFlow ABurn to control afterburn orientation,i picked the PFlow ABurn in the afterburn setting.and then ,i can see some of afterburn spheres goes correctly,but some of them do not change their direction. is this afterburn problem or a box3 problem? anybody knows it? please help me. and thank you very much.

Hi, i want to transfer a geometry based simulation to particles, but the transformation does not really match up and i dont know why, this is my setup: [img]http://image-upload.de/image/rIXRZk/0da64b9dc5.jpg[/img] this is a video that shows the issue the white chunks are the particles [url]www.matthiasm.de/shared/box3issue.mov[/url] also i attach the max scene, does anyone know why this happens ?

When I use a select object, then an object operator to grab the pivot, it seems I cannot animate the object and have the updated pivot locations passed to the flow. I do not have static object checked. Is there a validity interval you're forgetting to invalidate here or is it user error on my part? [edit] all of a sudden it's working. It seems to matter what you are doing with the flow after the object as to whether it updates or not.

hi, i am making an operator to generate noise on a surface ,which the box3 manual has helped me with! i would like to expose the mean/sigma values on the gaussian random operator, which i did through the "Parameter" suboperator, but because the relationship of mean and sigma are interdependant, i would like to create a function before feeding values to the the random(gaussian) subop so that when mean is increased sigma is decreased and vice versa, is this possible with the parameter subop? if not what is exact purpose of forcing to use parameter subop instead of scalar subop? i read in manual its useful for having same seed for many operators, any help is appreciated, thanks alot

Is it possible to have particles spawn off geometry that was created with pflow? For instance, a random spline(wire) generated by pflow animates up, and as it animates particles spawn off the mesh it creates. I know I could do 2 particle systems and use the same path, but I want the particles to appear to be growing off the mesh of the spline(wire) Thanks!

Is there a way to have a Data Channel specify the color of particles when displaying them using 2d helpers from a Display Operator? I can pipe channel data to vertex colors, but that only works for Geometry display and is extremely slow for even for a small number of particles... I need this for visualising channel data on point clouds, so any sort of numerical display like Display Data would not work, since it would only clutter the view.

This is kind of a stretch but anyway is there anyway to Get/Set this value?

Hi, trying to create some grass on a rounded surface (like a small planet) I am positioning some particles on the surface and orient their Z axis by using speed by surface (locked on object) and then rotation (speed follow). So they look like hair on a surface. But they all have the same XY axis orientation and i want then to have divergence on XY axis. But if i use the divergence in the rotation operator, the axis is the world axis instead of the local one. It seems that the rotation x y z themselves use the local axis, but the divergence uses the world axis? Is there a way to do it using box3 instead? [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/grass_a.JPG[/img] [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/grass_b.JPG[/img] [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/grass_c.JPG[/img] [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/grass_d.JPG[/img] [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/grass_e.JPG[/img]

please check following error..I paid good money for this software and it doesn't even install properly..I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64, 3D Studio MAX 2011 with the subscription advantage pack x64 Please advise.

Hi there! I have some beginner's questions about particles rotation: well, what i want to obtain with the box3, is an operator which sets the position of particles onto a object surface (and this is pretty easy) but the thing i didn't get, is having these particles _rotated_ as the surface's normals. E.g.: if the shape instance of the particle is a cone, and the object is a sphere, i just want all the cone's pike touching the sphere surface. I tought to connect `Closest Point to Surface' with `Point Normal' and then connect the resulting vector with the `Output Standard' in the rotation slot, but it didn't worked, giving me strange results. Also, i wish to obtain an operator which rotate particles in the direction of its speed vector, E.g. if i connect `Random' with `Output Standard' in the speed vector slot, and the particles moves randomly in the 3D space, the particles are little cones, and i want these cones oriented to where the particle is moving like a bunch of missiles. Can some one give me a little light on this subject? I have to use a TM for that, or i can do it just with `Output Standard' and the rotation slot? Why connecting `Point Normal' to `Output Standard' in rotation slot doesn't do that? there is some link/tutorial about this? Thanks! :)

Just thought I'd post up a flow I threw together today. Makes me wish sometimes that there was a script interpreter mode for Box#3! all that clicking and selecting gets tedious! [url=http://postimage.org/image/2nhkmocp0/][img]http://s3.postimage.org/2nhkmocp0/bricks_op.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://postimage.org/image/2nhma7p6s/][img]http://s3.postimage.org/2nhma7p6s/yuck.jpg[/img][/url]

What does this property do? It is avail in the Input Standard > Shape dropdown. I want to try to make an operator to spawn particles from another particles surface (not TM). My particles are all different shapes spawned with the birth group operator otherwise I could have just used a single ref object.

i have four spheres rotating randomly and hand animated position.....the four spheres are emitting smoke...i have some slow/stopping position animations in the sphere...i used FumeFX birth and FumeFX Follow operator and Krakatoa to render... when the spheres are slowing down i want the trail of particles also to slow down...and when the spheres resume their speed i want the particles trails also to resume speed.... if using Box #3 can someone briefly explain the setup or post the data flow screenshot??.....

I created a operator using Box 3. How can i delete it.

Hi there! So I have this event in my pflow: [img]http://www.brianalvarez.tv/pflow/fumeFx_and_findTarget.jpg[/img] It works fine, however, I am finding the particles either get affected by the Find Target or by the FumeFx Follow... never at the same time. I am finding that when the particles reach or in vacinity of the target, they start to advect from the fumefx follow but lose the target. Is it possible with any tools in Box #3 to make the two work at the same time? If so, would anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

Is it possible to delete some Particles after you have cached an event. I did a physics simulation and most of the particle did it as i wanted. A few Particles "breaked out". I think the best (and simpliest) way to optimize my simulation is to delete those particles by hand afterwards. Is there any way to do this ?? Regards H.Kroeber

I know this is a NOOB question. I've been able to animate particles building up around an object when the object itself is the emitter. I'm trying to have an emitter pass through an object emitting particles and have each particle that is emitted attach in an orderly way around a different object. For example: 2 shapes (box,sphere) The sphere is animating across the screen emitting particles. The box is in the middle. Every particle begins to attach to the box in an orderly way. As the sphere animates it continues to send particles until the box is built up. Thanks for your help.

hi, is there any way we could make a box3 operator which allows different shapes to be used as particles?

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember reading of someone else with this problem, but this is the first time I have encountered it.... I am caching (attempting to :) ) 240 frames and the cache will randomly stop before it is all cached. Sometimes it goes to frame 86, sometimes to 160, sometimes to 200...but it will not cache all 240. The machine has 24 gb ram and seems to use only around 3 - 4 gb... Once it stops, it does not crash. The proc's drop to 0 and I can hit stop on the cache dialog and it goes back into max. The basic setup is birthing 5 million particles over the course of 0-240 with life span of 1 frame. Of those, a semi-random abount move off via a data test op and spawn into 1-5 particles and all die upon collision of a ground plane30-40 frames later. My upper limit is set very high...100 million or such. I have two scenes of this exact setup, the same number of frames and the other cached witout error. There is a overall particle count difference with the two shots and the semi-randomness is an ocean surface which initiates the data test at wave crests and the two scenes use different locations upon this surface. I am uisng max 2011-64 on xp 64.

hi, is there any way to create particle emitters with box3? or how could i change the emission properties with a box3 operator behind birth? for example when i want to use an audio file or animated texture to generate particles i hope its not a stupid question, i know im not the box3 expert...

Hi all, For some reason I can't get the following (seemingly simple thing) to work: Generate a random position close to the current particle. If that position is NOT already ‘occupied’ by another particle, spawn a new particle and move it to that position. The problem is that I am getting overlapping particles, even though I’m using a [b]Closest Particle Index[/b] operator (tried others like [b]Closest Particle Distance[/b] as well). I've attached a zip containing two different setups (max 2010). The first one (SpawnTest_01.max in the attached zip) does this: - Get a random position (based on the current particle’s position) - If that position is NOT close to an existing particle: - - - Store the random position* - - - Spawn a particle - - - Position the spawned particle (using the stored Point3*) And the second one: - Spawn a particle - Get a random position (based on the current particle’s position) - If that position is NOT close to an existing particle: - - - Position the spawned particle - else - - - Delete I'm thinking that maybe the "[b]Closest Particle ..[/b]" operators are not aware of the newly spawned particles that were created in the current integration step. But I might be totally wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Martijn

It seems that the post cache ops are still not working with the 1.53 version of Box3. Anyone else confirm this or is it something on my end.

I would love for this to be resizable! Its very annoying when you have a long list of parameters to link up as the list keeps going back to the top when you add a parameter.

Hi, I found a little bit annoying in PF-TB3: it is the way random values are generated. I find an option missing: generate random value once and keep it between events. This is particlulary annoying in case of the need to position particles randomly on an object, but keep this positions fixed between animation frames. For practical description: I use Data Operator to position partcles in an object pivot point and then I add random vector to these positions to generate divergency. Unfortunately - these random vector is generated frame by frame, so particles do not stay fixed in their positions as expected but constantly "flicker" inside object's volume. Any idea how to overcome this nastiness is it possible at all?

Hi, I found that "Standard Input" suboperator was very minimalistically treated in PF-TB3 documentation. In the result, there is no single word about its "New In Event" Output type. Would you be so kind and enlihten me what's its about? I see this "New In Event" suboperator frequently in demos but I can't get the idea behind. What is the purpose and how to use it? Thanks ahead for answering this (robably very stupid) question.

Hi, Let's presume I have a large group of objects: a hundred or more objects grouped. Now, having "Data Operator" created in Particle Flow I did as follows using "Edit Data Flow": 1) I created a "Select Object" suboperator and loaded this group with "Multiple Objects". 2) I linked this to "Object" suboperator and selected "Object Pivot" as a property. I also selected "Separate Indexing For Group Members". 3) I linked this to "Output Standard" suboperator and selected "Position->Vector" as input type. Unfortunately, rather than having particles created in the pivot position of every object beloning to the group, I only see particles created in the pivot position of the first object in the group. This is not what I expected. The question is: How to wire data flow in Tools Box 3 in such a manner that particles are created in the pivot position of EVERY object belonging to the group loaded by "Select Object" suboperator rather than only in the pivot position of the first object of the group? Thank you very much for your prompt answer.

This didn't used to be a problem (as of a couple years back), but now spawned particles in a new event show 0 for mat ID using Show Data even though they color properly (having ID from parent) with a multi-sub material. Can anyone confirm this? to reproduce; -create several objects with different mat id's and parent together -create a shape instance and populate your system with above objects -spawn some particles and send to new event -check mat ID's on spawns

Hi, i have asked this before, but I never really understood it. Why is Box3 Disk Cache so slow? I can save out particles from Pflow with Krakatoa (not multithreaded) and they save 10-40x faster, than Box3 Disk Cache Operator. Even when I save most particle channels, the krakatoa particles are about 100kb per frame instead of 300kb. But what I dont understand why its so much slower. I would love to use Box3 Disk Cache operator, because it doesnt require to setup the scene completele new. With krakatoa particles I have to setup a PRT Loader, then I have to reimport into pflow, remap color/material properties, usually takes 10-15minutes to setup the scene again just to have it working with PRT Loader, but I sometimes have to do this because saving with krakatoa takes 5 minutes, instead of 30minutes... Will Pflow 2 solve this? Any box3 updates that could fix this problem? Thanks, ian

Hi, I am in need of a way to set a single float variable that can be read from the entire particle system. In other words, this would be a global variable and each particle could access it, but setting it once would change the value for all particles. How can this be done?? thank you

I am trying to delete particle outside of a mesh. I can delete inside of mesh but can't succeed for outside deletion. Like this particles gets deleted indide of sphere... [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/deleteoutsidebox3.jpg[/img] But if I choose "false to satisfy test" I was expecting the particles to be deleted ouside of the volume, but everything gets deleted. Is that normal?

I have a geometry of a walking figure that should make only particle that are inside the figure visible and renderable. The setup itself is super easy and the mesh has 10K polys, not too dramatic. Geometry save mode is checked in ALL geometry suboperators, i double checked. When i scrub the timeline or wanna make a preview i get the warning however that 'Geometry Save Mode' should be turned on Why is that even though it is checked in all sub ops?

Not sure if had that here yet but i'm sure we did and i can't find it using search right now: Find target by script vector > on ANIMATED objects (in my case an arm, that flexes muscles and bends). So i have all my particles aligned and spawned on the object with let's say surface spread and then triggered by a map the particles fly off the arm and when they reach a certain distance away from the arm they return to the arm that is at a different position and vertex animation stage to their original position on the arm. Just can't wrap my head around it right now... i attached a very simple stripped scene with a sphere (based on one of John's scenes) max2010-64 any help is appreciated. Inspiration is this effect: http://www.tas3d.com/blog/wp-content/gallery/second_skin/second_skin2.jpg (easy to do on a still object, not the issue) http://www.tas3d.com/video/second_skin1.mov (same effect on an arm as well)

Hi I have done some simulation in fumeFX and want to drive my particles with fume fx simulation. Everything is working fine one one machine (with FumeFX license ) Because i have big renderfarm and want to used it I have prepared clean scene with cached particles and no fumeFX nodes either i Pflow and scene. Scene is fine ( opening, cache disk works fine no problems at all). Then I'm trying to send it on renderfarm and getting on all nodes message: " unexpected exception has occured " and max crashing. I have been trying to find a reason for that and it looks like Cache Disk doing it. I just swiched off Cache Disk nad scene renders fine on my renderfarm. Any suggestions ?? Does Cache Disk records some additional data (like fume fx etc) which are missing in clean scene ?? I have been trying to exclude some data from cache disk but still the same. I have other similar scenes ( without fume fx) with cache disc and they render fine on renderfarm. Any help will be appreciated Thanks Chris

I'm having trouble with a find-target by script vector operator. It renders without issue on my workstation, but when sent through backburner it crashes, both on my nodes, and even on my workstation if server is running... Any suggestions? [code:1]on ChannelsUsed pCont do ( pCont.useAge = true pCont.useTM = true pCont.useShape = true ) on Init pCont do ( global ChunksArrayB = $_anim_loz_struct_* as array ) on Proceed pCont do ( t = pCont.getTimeStart() as float if t < 0 do ( NumChunks = ChunksArrayB.count for i = 1 to (NumChunks) do ( pCont.AddParticle() pCont.particleIndex = pCont.NumParticles() pCont.particleAge = 0 pCont.particleTM = ChunksArrayB[i].transform pCont.particleShape = ChunksArrayB[i].mesh ) ) ) on Release pCont do ( )[/code:1]

Hi Guys, Am I using the Shape Control Operator right? Sometimes the particles update the shape, other times, they won't! Any help would be awesomeee. Thanks, Nick

does anyone by any chance have a toolbox 3 preset that mimics the travel by distance spawning or can explain how that could work (so i can add an option to raise the spawn value based on camera distance)? thanks!

hey, i send some particles through a repeating event where a data operator changes their direction based on some rules. now i want other particles to follow the exact same path, but with a time offset my approach was to copy the speed vector to a custom new channel and reuse it in a parallel particle stream. this does not work, only paricles (or data displays) down the same stream "see" the channel data? isn't it supposed to work globally?

if i activate script wiring for a force operator i have the option to use the script float as influence amount, but if i have two or more force operators and want to controll the influence amount individually, is there a way to do so too ? i think i somehow have to use the "From Data Operator" option right ? but how does that work exactly ?

Is it possible to have a ticksPerFrame selection in any of the time related sub-ops? I think it may make time related data op presets more cross scene friendly. For example Parameter->Time ticksPerFrame checkbox.

Please make box#3 tutorial more~ I want the tutorial that make from orbaz directly.

[url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=TsJ1Z9i][img]http://s2.postimage.org/J1Z9i.jpg[/img][/url] Im experiencing something wierd that i cant recall happening before: when i select certain geometry calculation times in the geometry sub operator i loose others. for example i select "Inside Object" and as a result i get a whole new set of selectable options to choose from. It will never go back to "Closest Point Distance" e.g. or anything calculating "Closest XYZ". I have to delete the geo subop and create a new one in order to get other geometry calculation to pick from.

Hi there! How can I give separate　number by particle as Influence in Force with PFTB#3? Thanks

Is there a way to update multiple cache disk operators at once in box 3 (caches that are not part of the same flow)?

I've been pressing the cache to disk operator pretty hard the last few days and it's great, although there are a few things that don't quite work the way I had expected. I used to work extensively with cloth before it was integrated into max - with it's cache, you can pick up a cache stored on disk, truncate at any point and continue to solve from that point based on the motion stored in the cache file. I'm finding with box3 cache to disk, that if I do something like run partway through a sequence and stop the caching to check the particles from other angles, then trying to pick up where it left off (by changing the update range) there's quite a delay before it starts the new "first' update frame - almost as though its re-solving from the initial birth frame, regardless of the the existing cache. If I cache one event, there are certain things that cant be added or changed - like tests, camera culling etc. I know there's the option to flag certain operators to be used post-cache, but the operators I tried to add either didn't have any effect, or weren't able to be selected. Is there a reason that cached information can't be further modified? Does the Post-cache operators area have to be filled with other operators BEFORE caching in order for them to be modifiable? The last part I cant get my head around is that if cache really is just baking everything so the particles can no longer be touched, downstream/test events still seem to update to some extent, even if they are turned off - only deleting the wire seems to stop this happening. I've skimmed through the manual for more info, but I can't seem to answer those questions - is there any good reference out there for what cache to disk can and can't do? Many thanks

Hello , everyone I'm just started to learn Box2&Box3 , I have several questions and need some help 1.How to use Geometry OP's Random Surface Point? In Box3's sample scene file that included a "SpawningParticlePerVertex".It connected both geometry and Particle Birth Index to Vertex Position , but Random Surface Point only have a Object input , how can I use it to random particle's position on surface? 2.Interact with moving objects Ordinarily , spwan additonal particles just use a Select Object OP then pick one object(static or baked geometry) and connect to Geometry / Object op, but how can I grab general particle shape or PhysX shape ? Is "Input Standard" > "Shape Surface" a correct way? Any ideas? 3.Spwan with PhysX(Separate datas) I have done a PhysX test scene (below link Max2010 file), in this scene when the object(falling cube) hit the ground then spwan some debris , I have finished spwaning part but I have no ideas how separate datas to continue falling cube's simulation. Thanks a lot!

Hello. I've recently started to learn Box 3, and I'm still experementing. I tried to create particles that move along the pflow arrow, then move randomly, and then move as they did previously (along the icon arrow again). What i did was use an age input, to enable an standard output (velocity vector) connected to a "random" vector opoerator. Till this point it works fine, the particles move along the icon arrow and after a few frames they go random. What i can't achieve is after a few more frames make them move as they did before the random opoerator. I'm sure that there a many easyer ways to achieve this (set an output velocity vector connected to a vector opoerator), but what i want to do is take the direction of the particles (lets say at particle age 2) and use that. I'm doing this for learning purposes. Thanks in advance.

The test interface that is exposed by all test classes seems to be unavailable for Data Test / Data Icon Test operators. isProperty $'Send Out 01' #getNextActionList >> true isProperty $'Data Icon Test 01' #getNextActionList >> false How do I find the Event that is connected to a given Data Test operator? Thanks, Martijn

Ive installed the demo version v1.05 for 3ds 2008 but the new operators don't work/don't update,etc. Its seems the 'Data Views' aint working correctly, cant edit any particle properties or data, wiring,etc. Need help. Im using 3ds Max 2008 with no service packs under Windows 7 64-bit.. Thanks Mark,

i have animated the icon from a data operator, it is keyframed, but how can i control this in the curve editor? i dont see it anywhere

Hi, i am wondering if I can store data in a mxs vector channel in box3 ? Thanks

Hi Guys. I cached a box 2 simulation to disk. now i want to timescale it without rebaking it. Because of the "FilePerFrame" System of Cache Disk the Animation doesn't change. Is there a way to bypass the Update of the cache ? Regards H.Kroeber

hi, i would like to improve an operator, but am not sure what is going wrong. In the beginning it works fine, but the more time evolves, the less accurate the result is. Im not sure how to improve the timing/sampling/ or whatever the problem is. I even tried setting vieport to 1/8 frame sampling, and even to 1ticks in render, but that just speeds up the particles, it does not improve the accuracy. The problem is that they are not aligning perfectly anymore, as they are in the beginning. The Scene consistes of 2 operators, one which puts an incremental speed on each particle, so that each particle is slighty faster than the next (direction of particles is set with a rotation operator before). The 2nd operator returns them to birth position after a certain position. You can also see the effect I am trying to achieve here: http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=1271 Thanks to Matthias for helping create the dataflow! [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aVGObN9][img]http://s4.postimage.org/GObN9.jpg[/img][/url]

I was playing in Krakatoa with the KCM's and a bit in Thinking Particles and I noticed that they have curve operators. Right now I use the Power function to create curves for various effects, but an actual editable curve would be very handy :D

I am trying to test the cache operators in box3 with a demo license in max 2010 SP1. I have some particles with instances. I am trying to cache without the shape and using post-cache operators list to select the shape operator. I cache everything seems ok in the viewport feedback. But after cache is completed I always get erratically spinning and maybe jittering particles. They are supposed to spin smoothly. I also tried with a simpler setup and I got same results. here is my original setup: [img]http://www.strob.net/ImagesMTup/pflow/pflowBox3cache_001.JPG[/img]

I can sample Objects with a time input so I can specify the sample timing, which allows me to get the acceleration of an object by comparing it's speed at two moments. I see no such option for Input Standard or Particle. How can I sample those at a time different from the current integration step? - Chad

hi, i am assuming position object is history dependant, because its very slow once i chek - lock on emitter- , im using it on a mesh which is animated with a map... can you tell me how i can recreate position object modifier as a data operator so i can turn hist. dependance off? thanks!

hi, last october i discovered a very interesting technique, i call it superflow :) if someone here can help me create the box3 operators, i would be more than greatful! would even be willing to return my services in form of cg renders, animations or professional photos :) ok, i would like to create a box3 operator, that can create particles, but i want to setup a hierarchy that the first particle is the mother, the 2nd the child, the 2nd child being the mother of the 3rd child, being the mother of the 4th child, etc. is this hierarchy setup possible for particleS? next i need to change the pivot points of all particles to rotate around the source, the mother particle is this pivot changing possible? thats really all it takes, the last step is only to transform all particles at once, selecting all and rotatingthem around one axis creates the same corestructure as superformula, interesingly enough... so the 3 operators i need would be 1)create particles (in straight lines, in a grid, in circles, those options would be nie as well) 2)change hierarchy 3)change pivot 4)add transform functions i am totally new to box3, if anyone could help i would be very very thankful (attached i have trajectory path of this setup, without particles :) [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=TsqqwiJ][img]http://s2.postimage.org/qqwiJ.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi, I am using Box #3 Pro v.1.5 and am having lots of trouble when using 'Object Parameter' and 'shape control'. I am trying to use these to query/set the radius of a sphere. Both sub-operators will let me choose the sphere as the object. However, when I try to choose the radius parameter, both "Object Parameter' and 'Shape Control' cause 3ds Max to immediately crash. This happens with the particles on or off. Is this a bug? Are there any work arounds?

Hello. "Keep Apart" operator makes the particles spining around when they are standing or moving slowly, and I can not use "Speed Space Follow" test. Can the Box#3 resolve this problem? http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2616 Thank You.

When outputting a vector as PhysX Force, what "type" is it? Is it Uniform, Surface, Gravity, or other? I'm getting good vector output values, meaning, when I read IN the PhysX Force, the vector values look correct, but the speed vector of the particles doesn't seem to relate quite as well as I was expecting. - Chad

Is the Time datatype in frames? And integer? Seems odd to me, like I'd either want ticks or seconds. Frames isn't a a time unit at all. If I wanted to get ticks or seconds, what should I do? - Chad

I'm trying to save a Data Operator Preset that has a Shape Control output. The problem is, the preset doesn't save the actual object used for the shape sampling, and I can't expose that either. So when I load the preset, I have to select the geometry node again, and when I do that I lose all the parameter controllers. What's the recommended way to handle this? - Chad

Shape Control is filling my listener with the actual modifier stack changes for each particle. Is there a way to suppress that? - Chad

Finally I resolved my problem for variable number of targets (previous post). I used another particle system as targets and setting a filter channel that excludes the non-desirable targets. But there is more than one system seeking the targets, and I need to filter out the non-active systems by their "number of particles" property. And this is the bug, I think. The particles subop never returns zero particles from a proxy system. It returns the number of particles of the host system instead. Using the simple script shown the result is correct but with a 1 frame offset (the dependency problem, I suppose). MAX 2008, BOX#3 1.076 Forgive my bad English. Thanks.

Hi, I'm back to troubles. I'm trying to accomplish a flow where particles arrives at targets only once. I have (say) 10 targets (amount-fixed, non-moving) that must be reached by 1 particle each. To simplify things a bit lets say 10 particles. The problem is to assign the correct target to each particle for a find target test in script mode (as usual). My first approach was assign the pos of each target to each particle by index. Obviously this ends in a particle per target but in no especial order, so the travel for the particles is not correct. The second approach was using a script op. Testing distance against a list of already assigned targets. It works fine but extremely slow for a high count of particles. So for this and other works, I'm trying to find a way to count repeated values in particle channels and finally substitute them for unique ones. No way! Any idea will be welcome! PD: I'm ussing BOX#3 1.0.7.6 for MAX 2008. Forgive my very bad English.

Hi all, I heard that toolbox3 has the ability to simulate inter-particle collision. The particle will be using an instanced geometry and it will be colliding with each other to spawn more particles. I have toolbox3 however I'm still beginner with this plugin and I wonder if there's any tutorial link I can follow to solve this issue. Thanks and much appreciate your help.

Is there a way we can check to see how well our discretization is working? I've got 7 inputs, 4 discretizators, and 3 pipes. But I don't know how well I'm limiting the shape combinations. I figure at frame 1, when I've got 60 particles, it can't be more than 60 shapes, but later on, I can't tell how much savings I'm getting, or if I'm doing enough. - Chad

Cache Selective doesn't let me set the maximum memory above 4GB. Is there a reason for that, or is it just a sanity check? For workstations with large amounts of RAM, 16GB or more isn't unreasonable for just particle caches. - Chad

Hey Oleg, is there way to introduce a phase value into the Random Walk operator? I love the way this operator works but it would be nice if one could animate the phase of the noise so the particles would move around instead of moving through a 'locked' noise value. Maybe this could be built in Box 3? I need to learn Box 3 so maybe this would be a good opportunity for me. :) Thanks!

Hey guys, i'm having a really annoying issue with the Cache disk operator and rendering over the network on our renderfarm. I cached all particles of a 250 frames animation that is quite heavy/long to render. When i check the cached animation on my workstation everything seems fine, when i render it out... after 200 frames it seems the random seed of the particle placement is reseted to something different, i've cached again and again and re-rendered, it has costed us days of delays on delivering this animation, as it takes around 15 hours with our 15 machines to render out this chunk, and i just can't figure out why it is that the particles jump from one position to an other at that point. SO, at this point, we're way over deadline for this one, any suggestions are welcome. Cheerios, Adriano

Hey there, seems like i am finally getting an IT slot to have the Boxes distributed over all the farm. We do have the TSquid Box#1 (which is installshield and can hence be automated using an answer file). For Box#3 it seems you're using InstallAware and according to their forums options need to be specified on the command line and that the variable names are only available from the vendors. As we're using central software management to push installs that would be a great help for the IT dept. Could you provide these variable names ? Thanks a lot in advance, Thorsten

Hi guys i really need help on this on as fast as possible i have to make an animation from a world map. 1. The particles have a fixed position 2. The particles scales up by time but not all a the same time 3. I need something like when an water drop falls in water and make the rings scale up the particle by time 4. In my Case the particles are little house and need to be scaled up in a small area that grows by the time and scale the other ones 5. Please look at the picture Any help is more than welcome and i really apriciate all your help

I have a quick question about Toolbox #2#3, is there any way i can send the ParticleCaching task to the renderfarm? or at least send it out to one rendernode, so i could keep working in my scene while it is caching?

I was going through the first tutorial, particle size by inter-particle distance. and before the last part where we add the input standard operator according to the warning that the particles would update on each frame, i am finding that they do not update on each frame if they are animated. so I animated the control points to a simple ffd box around the sphere, which I also converted to epoly. I am expecting the particles to travel with the animated sphere. The auto update or even manual update do not seen to work. I even verified that they dont render too by going to a non zero frame and quick rendering. please take a look at the attached file.

is there any way to build in a switch to change coordinate systems of a vector from cartesian to cylindrical or spherical? trying to integrate & expose everything in the menu not having to go into dataflow, thanks

hi, i would like to convert a 2dimensional formula into 3 dimensions http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/geometry/supershape3d/ i know ihave to include latitute and longitude in this formula, but have no idea how i would incorporate that into the dataflow any ideas are greatly appreciated :) formula available http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=934 thanks

I have an operator which generates Particles and dictates their position. How can i change the flow to let it effect the particles going into the event, instead of generating where they are from the beginning. I assume my first step is to remove the Birth Index ID from the dataflow, of course the particles dissappear then :) Is it an easy remove and replace procedure to let operator just change incoming particles instead of generating by oneself? would then behave Kinda like a force or spacewarp i guess

Is there a way to use real number for a suboperator and lock it down to "integers". Allowing it to have decimal spaces, but stepping to the next integer once a value above 1 is reached. So Value of > 1 steps to 2. Value > 2 steps to 3. etc. Is this possible? The integer solution works, but it doesnot fill the shapes, i have to use 50K particles instead of 3K.

Hi, i have attached a screenshot. In this formula, m is not definable as a paramter. I wish to change this, and be able to change M. Unfortunately i don't know how to change R1, or let an input determine its value. Thankyou for the help!

i am wondering how i can change display options in the data operators, for example, the particle per vertex, i have changed the flow to allow it to change on animated mesh,i also included the option of selecting multipe meshes, this i saved as a preset, but loading this data preset does not allow me to select multipe meshes, how can i activate this option so i dont have to go into the dataflow each time? thanks

i have done my first box3 tutorial, and i already feel in love with it :) but some questions have risen up already: putting spheres on vertices works great, then scaling them with scale average by particle distance also works, but only really well if i keep the scale of the object around 1 unit, as soon as i scale it up, random spheres start blowing up, 1)how to control this, how to change the scale average ? i have it on a teapot for example, as soon as i have teapot bigger than radius 1 (or if i scale it up with manipulator,) it starts to look weird i wouldnt have a problem working with such a small scale, but the camera starts clipping in viewport... 2)how can i adjust my flow so the spheres scale up so they touch each other, so no missing space is inbetween? (the greater the vertex distance the higher scale will be 3) how can i animate the particles? when i change rotation on one frame in viewport, particles change, but once i keyframe the rotation nothing happens... --------------------------------------------------(after 5min of playing around) [b]4) I AM REALLY IN LOVE WITH BOX 3 :) alone what i can do with the particle per vertex, incredible! [/b] i have attached a pic of what i did with a torus and particle per vertex :)

Hi, Im trying to use cache to disk with multiple box#2 events. I have placed my cache to disk operator in the global event presumably to catch all the events. I am writing a single cache file for each frame and they are fairly large (30+ megs each frame). I have veiwport/render selected in the cache to disk operator but on render is seems like PF is trying to build the particles as if the cache is not there. viewport seems to work OK. Also if I disconnect OR turn off the events below the cache to disk operator all the particles disappear as if the Cache is not being read at all. Any thoughts as to what I've screwed up this time Thanks

hi, i need your help.i made a cylinder as emitter.and i animated it at on the line with path constrait.i also animated at data operator i choosed spherical polar coords.but when the cylinder start the motion data operator doesn't follow the cylinder. even i choosed lock on emitter it would be the same.cylinder goes and motion makes animation on his place.i want cylinder goes and pflow will follow it.how can i do this? thanks from now on. sincerely Mustafa Ercan

hi i am completley new to box#3 here is my data operator [img]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8741/18216185.jpg[/img] the random turbulence strengh is controled by an audio track. I am fine with the position vector i created but if i try to use a spawn operator to create a trail behind these particles it does not work. I cant use spawn by travel distance / speed Inheritance, since there is no information in the speed channel i guess. Is there a easy way to solve this ? Is it possible to access the position vector 1 frame before the current frame without scripting? So i could generate a vector for the speed channel.

Hey everyone, i am currently using the result of a realflow sim (wich is basically a puddle of fluid on a plane) and pipe it into PFlow to transform the liquid into a specific shape. To do this i am using a Box 3 DataOp to store the closest point into the MXS Vector channel as the FindTarget "closest surface mode gives weird results and strange distribution. While it seems to work and the shape does resemble the reference mesh object i created it has an offset in both rotation and position to the actual mesh object. Any ideas what i might be doing wrong ? Kind Regards, Thorsten

Hi, I'm using 3dsmax 2008 x64 bit with the latest hotfix installed on XP Pro x64 SP2. I really wanted to try out box#3 so I downloaded the box#3 demo. If I add a data test, then go to Edit Data Flow and add a suboperator there, say a random or a vector, then max crashes. Loading the example files also result in a crash.. Anyone else encountered this?

I'm trying to do the following and I can't quite wrap my head around the correct way to do it. What I want to do is spawn 4 particles per particle and those 4 particles need to be arranged in a square around the particle that spawned it. Once the new particles are spawned, the parent should be deleted. Now, I can easily arrange the particles in the square, I'm just not sure how I can loop through the 4 new particles giving each a position derived from the original. It's like I need a loop operator! I saw the example of the clumping but that doesn't really apply to me because I need to precisely control each spawned particles position. Does anyone have any hints? Thanks! Rhys. P.S. If I can solve this, it's going to save me a whole world of pain!

Hello, I'm using box#3 1.5, and am running 3dsmax2009 64-bit. I'd like to create a preset dataflow for a "data preset" operator. My current data flow loads in a piece of geometry, and generates one particle per tri. I'd like my data preset to have a place to select the object in its parameters. However, when I try to "expose parameters" on my data flow, before saving the preset, no matter what I do in the expose parameters dialog box, each time I click "add" it says "cannot add parameter". Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? :)

Hi I have created operator (with Oleg help) in PToolbox 3 which places particles on each poly of given geometry. Now i have to align particle rotation to single poly rotation. I have been trying to speed by surface and then rotation in speed space but no luck. Any ideas how to achieve this Thaks Chris

Hello, I have a 10 X 10 grid of particles and I'd need them to randomly change from one color to another... I'd like to get the effect of those old sci fi movie computers where lights on a grid blink on and of randomly. It would be great if I could control the timing of these since I wouldn't want to switching to happen too rapidly... Any ideas? Thanks!

Hello everyone. I'm creating an LED type screen where deflectors change particles from grey to red. I need a condition that will make particles change to red while in contact with a custom deflector and turn to grey when they are not. I'm sure it's a very simple condition... however I can't figure it out!... Please help, Thank you!

hello, what i want to do seems simple but as i am very new to box 3 i am still struggling to get this to work: i have particles following a fumefx simulation, and i want to somehow utilize the fumefx test and a data operator to read the smoke values on every particle position to output those as a script float and then use that to control particle density in krakatoa. any help would be much appreciated! thanks, simon

Hi, I'm looking to do something similar to maya's script extractPolyFacesToParticles, Basically it creates a particle per face then makes the particles instance's of the faces so that you can control the faces as if they where particles. Does anyone know howthis would be achieved? Thanks

Hi Guys! I just got my box#3 license this week and started playing around a bit. While testing I ran into some problems so maybe someone here can help me. I'm running the Box#3 1.5 Pro beta (non-ACAP) with 3dsmax 2009 (+ creativity extension) on a Windows Vista 64-bit Machine. What happens is: - when I try to expose parameters in 32-bit Max it tells me that it "cannot add parameter", on the 64-bit Max it's the same, but Max also crashes when I close the expose parameter dialog - in the switch suboperator I'm not able to choose the active input from the dropdownlist, it always shows the first input in the list no matter what I select - I can't get the post-cache operators to work properly, maybe I'm doing something wrong. I included a testfile for this using the standard flow and cache selective. So, I'm not sure if these are known beta issues that are going to be fixed. I couldn't find anything about that in the forums. Thanks in advance! Regards, Chris

Hello, I am using a Data Test with Amount Change to spawn new particles and these new particles are the immediately sent to the next event. The problem is that the new particles seem to be hidden from the next event as far as the data operator is concerned. For example, I made a simple setup like this Event 01: Birth: 1 particle at frame 0 Data Test: spawn 20 particles per frame and sends spawned particles to next event Event 02: (spawned particles are sent here) Data Operator: Always shows only 20 particles total!! Even when I can see hundreds or thousands in the viewport, only data for 20 shows up!! What can I do to have the spawned particles be recognized in the data operator? This is very frustrating. For example, I was trying to scale them down individually and then delete when scale was zero, but whole sections of particles were popping out all at once when only one individual particle should have been deleted. I tried using a standard Spawn operator in the first event, and had the same results. Please help, I am on a tight deadline and cannot find a work around.

I'm trying to make an operator and have gotten stuck in box#3. I'm pretty sure that what I'm trying to do is possible. Basically what I'm trying to do is to create fake MB on particles. First up, I have hooked the Y scale of a 2D particle up to the speed (with a multiply) so far so good. and set the orientation in the direction of the speed. this gives me stretched particles in their direction of motion. Now where I've gotten stuck is with accounting for camera motion. I can load in the camera TM, speed, spin and FOV. I think that is all I need to offset the particle orientations. I suspect that I need to construct a camera matrix somehow and transform the vectors through it, add them and then transform them back through again. Or something like that. Does anyone have any ideas on how I should attack this? Rhys.

I know I've seen something similar to this before somewhere on the forum - but trying to figure out how, with box #3, to do an initial check after birth to see if any particles are within the volume of another object, and if they are, send them to another event. Still pretty green to box #3, and I have something that I think makes sense, but can't seem to get it to work. Any ideas?

Im trying to get objects and their animation into pflow so I can use a mesher on it then point cache the whole mesher, converting my thousands of objects into one mesh+Point Cache. I can do it fine with script ops or Birth Group and Box3, but if the original objects are a bit "off" in the Transform Matrices the particles dont line up properly. Whats the maths to set them straight? Here is an example file: the Tiles are fine while the beams are all over the place

Hi there, good to see the "usual faces" here too. We finally got our Box#3 Lic and i started playing, looking, reading and scratching my head. So i am trying to do an align to normal of closest surface (wich is the spawn surface. So i have a position object op followed by a dataop. See the result and my Dataflow. What i was after was aligning the boxes properly to the surface normal wich they are obviously not. I tried comparing to various other flows but seems it currently is still a bit over my head so i'd appreciate a pointer in the right direction. Kind regards, Thorsten

Hi How is the quickest setup to place particle on each geometry polygon (like particle per vertex data preset works). Chris

hello, is it possible to blend two particle positions by weight? thanks

Hey everyone, I've posted a question in the general discussion forum, but I'm really asking for a box 3 solution, so I think I should have posted here :roll: Here's a link to the post to save having the same thread twice: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2030 Many thanks for any help! Z.

I feel like a completly stupid. I'm trying to transform all particles in an event every time a new particle arrives to this same event. No way. Any idea?

Hey everyone, I've been trying to get a Box 3 solution to this problem but I really can't figure out how to do it. I hope someone can help.... I have particles moving at various speeds, and I want to create an operator which slows them to a stop, but proportionally to their speed, so the faster they are moving, the quicker they slow down. It would be cool to have control over the average slowdown time too.... I'm sorry to have to ask for help, but I'm such a nooby with this kind of thing and, a little playing around aside, I don't really know where to start. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction.... Many thanks in advance, Z.

Hi, i try to do a sand simulation, like this video. I´m newbie on #Box 3 and #Box 1, . This video was made for Miguel Perez Senent on Houdini. http://www.youtube.com/v/JtzPLEp127Q&hl=es&fs=1 A little explanation of this video, first rigid bodies objects are simulate on collisions and that data is transfer to the particles, but is not transfer by a pivot point of each rigid body ball, is transfer to proximity point, something like point normal. So that´s my rigid bodies ball simulation on Reactor: http://www.youtube.com/v/kpl1Hj4Uc6I&hl=es&fs=1&rel=0 and then i made my #Box 3 flow, and that is the result: http://www.youtube.com/v/7gPkRMC6GP4&hl=es&fs=1 The particles are tetra shape, linked in rotation and position of my rigid bodies objects balls http://www.youtube.com/v/-22Q4iXVpp4&hl=es&fs=1 And that are my particles without shape just dots, following exactly the pivot point off each Rigid body ball object. http://www.youtube.com/v/DNB1cHZRceg&hl=es&fs=1 And that are my particles without shape just dots. So to do that I have to for each ball a Particle Flow event, and that is not correct because I have 3000 balls, and I Will have 3000 Particle Flow events, like my image bellow. [URL=http://img142.imageshack.us/my.php?image=diagrama.jpg][img]http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/1666/diagrama.jpg[/img][/URL] I take one Event and I made de FLow with Box #3´s Flow too, and that is the flow: [URL=http://img111.imageshack.us/my.php?image=diagramafull.jpg][img]http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/6181/diagramafull.jpg[/img][/URL] So I want to do is with one PFSource pick up all the balls and the particles follow this balls, but don´t follow like this by a pivot point, but by proximity point or point normal, and I will have more randomized particles, that would be like the balls transfer data of position to the particles, but don´t to one particle but to all. Well thanks for everything, somebody help me PLEASEEEEE with that, THANKS :D Sorry for my poor English :?

Hi, I want to do something that seems very simple, but I am having problems understanding the Amount Change operator and how you access the parent and spawned particle positions. All I want to do is for every particle born, spawn 10 more within 100 unit radius around the first one. Cheers

Well it has been a while since I posted a problem with rendering on a network but this time it seems more consistent. Problem: While working on my pflow data operators I will be rendering on multiple machine via network and getting consistent output on all, as expected. Then I will suddenly find that one of the rendered sequences will not of rendered any p-flow data operator systems (this appears to be across all machines). The interesting thing is that once this has happened when I open any max scenes on my local machine which contain p-flow data operator systems they will not appear in the scene until the p-flow system has been turned off and back on again. this appears to happen when loading up any scenes until without warning it will all start working again. Extra info: I use Backburner as a render manager and can resubmit jobs. Previously submitted jobs that worked then are resubmitted with all the same settings will no longer work during the error time. Our license is stored on a server not locally. It appears to be functioning correctly. The version we run is Box 3 version 1.08 from TurboSquid. We mainly run 64bit 3DS but during error time it fails to load data operators in 32bit also. Operating system we use is windows xp 64bit. Any ideas? I will be grateful for any suggestions.

Hi all How would I go about creating a velocity pass with BOx3 , similar to the classic la maison 2d motion vector MentalRay shader ? I guess ill need to somehow set up the correct range, then pipe the velocity channel into the vertex color.. Any suggestions ??

This is basic question. I want ignore Emitter Motion. moving emitter,particles follow the motion [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq2Hxix9][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq2Hxix9.jpg[/img][/url] I want this particle motion.(the particle motion sees like the emitter is not moving.) [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2QPyWr][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2QPyWr.jpg[/img][/url] thus,I build data operator... [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq2Hxq0A][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq2Hxq0A.jpg[/img][/url] but,particle motion is that image [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2QPDVJ][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2QPDVJ.jpg[/img][/url] How may I assemble it?

I noticed that when a flow contains a Filter input (right at the end of the flow, linked to a Custom Output operator) and somewhere in that same flow there is a Pipe operator, the filter is ignored. Even when the filter is False for all particles, the Custom Output operator's value is being set anyway. If I also connect the filter to any Pipe operators that are in the flow (instead of just the Custom Output at the end), it does work as expected. I don't have an example of this right now (at least not one that I can share), but if you need one I can probably set one up pretty quickly. Martijn

Hi, I've started using box3 to cacheDisk some realflow particles. If I cache for viewport it works really well. But if I cache for both viewport and render, it works for the viewport, but it is not helping at all with the render. In fact it's doing the opposite. If I render locally on one machine I get about 1 frame every 3 minutes. On the farm (56 machines using deadline), I killed the render after not producing any frames after 25 minutes. This also seems to be bringing the network to it's knees. The cache files are only about 2 meg each so I would have thought that it could have loaded that with no problems and then rendered the frame with no problems. When I watch a slave when it's rendering, it says that it's updating the pFlow and counting up a percentage like it's "updating" when you odn't have any cache. Can anyone shed any light as to how I might be able to get Cachedisk to work for rendering as well as viewports? What things are there to look out for? I do have the quantity multiplier set the same for render/viewport. Cheers, Cg.

Chris Thomas is considering putting some training together for Box#3, if you are interested chime in [url=http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=704918&page=2&pp=15]HERE[/url] best regards, John

any ideas how to set that up? it involves an amount change and a condition. so far is clear to me. im thinking an exaust flame system that influences fume velocities...

I need a way, using box 3, to set the rotation axis by the normal of the closest point of a mesh so the particles would align to the face and then keep spinning. Its for a slow-mo shot of something breaking through glass. I would try box 2 but I need more control over the system. I have a collision with the object that sends particles to the next event and I would like to set the spin axis in this next event. I would use speed space but all my particles are moving in one axis, not bouncing off the mesh. How would I do this?

I try to assemble a simple lock bond that has the "Break Off when exeeded" feature :( Locking particles to an object with box3 is an easy one. but as they are locked they don´t have a speed i can possibly pipe "condition" into to test if they are over or under a certain speed. Maybe im over complicating stuff as i want a switch for "below" or "above"... maybe some creative input? thanks in advance Ansi

Hi all, At the moment I have pflow system A which uses find target to find particles in system B. So far I have everything working but I want to refine which particle in system B is to be found by assigning a different particle ID as the target. What i want to try is using a random ID number between numparticles and 1. So ideally i would like random sub op to have integer or real inputs for the min/max values. Will such functionality be added in the next box3 version? So in the meantime is there a way to generate random values like in maxscript where i can use other data as min/max values? Thanks

Hi guys, I'm playing around with the demo version of box3 for max 2008 and i want to find out if what i'm trying is possible.. I'm trying to make an operator which places a particle at every object selected through the select object suboperator. Here i have selected a group and I want to test the amount of particles against the amount of objects. But i can't seem to find how to read the number of objects i have in the select object sub op. surely this can be done but how? Or is there a workaround or something? Thanks

Why does this not work? I have built what I thought would be a really simple little operator. It basically scales particles based on age. however it doesn't work. Why is this? What have I done wrong? Regards, Rhys.

I have setup a nice mesh collision flow with the help of PsychoSilence, here: [url]http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1791&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=[/url] Im have added particles bouncing off the mesh and divergence into the system but want to get spawning on collision Would I need to spawn in the collision data test? I also wouldnt mind having control over how much influence the speed vector has compared to the "point normal" vector. Im not sure how to do this Here is the data operator for the bouncing (am i doing it right?)

Im realy tired of dealing with PFlows SUPER slow collisions with UDeflector and animated meshes (Point Cache to be precice, but skinned objects are just as bad). Would it be possible to rebuild this functionality in Box 3 and most importantly would it be faster?

How does the inputting of real or vector data into the Random sub-operator relate to the generation of noise or turbulence it outputs? Do the input(s) act as seed values for the generation of noise?

Hello, I just bought Box #3 so this is a bit new to me. I have a question about the Output Custom Operator. Output Custom (OC): transfers calculated data into data channel created by Output New operator. Output New (ON): creates new data channel that can be used by Input Custom and Output Custom. How does data from OC integrate with data in ON? Does it just overwrite what is already in the chosen ON operator?

I have an issue where i have to scale/move cached particles by a certain value. Let´s say i cached out a particle movement as PRT (Krakatoa´s Particle Cache) and since it works more stable then the box3 Cache to Disk. Now i wanna scale the cache because my final scene might be in meters in stead of inches. loading the position vector into a data op and adding 39.27 (or any other value X to value Y conversion rate) as a real scaler to a function with multiplication obviously does not work. having a workaround to re-scale and maybe even re-time particles with one tiny data op instead of re-caching would rock big time! any tips welcome :) anselm EDIT: i have the feeling it is a sooo simple operation...

I seem to be having some difficulty being able to control speed or time. I have a data op that stores the positions and ID's of some particles. Then some forces are applied distorting the particles positions, then I have another operator that grabs the initial stored vector positions and id's of the particles and averages them with the current positions to return them to there initial positions. I would like to be able to slow down the effect. So my questions is how can I control the speed or duration at which this happens. [url=http://www.4rand.com/TEST/ParticleFlow/Box3/Rebuild/rebuild.mov]Rebuild.mov 7.5 mb QT[/url] Thanks, John

Hi there, Attached is a file where the results I get in 32b or 64b 3dsmax are very different. The expected results are only showing in 32bit. What I get in 64bit is more chaotic on the other hand. If you open up the scene, you will see a single particle in the middle. It's being directed by the gradient of a 3d noise map. That gradient value is what shows different values in the 2 different max builds. In 32bit i get (of frame 0): [-0.454, -.633, -0.626] In 64bit i get: [-0.5587, -0.7871, -0.2612] This could also be an error with the noise map. If you up the particle count you will see huge differences in motion. In 32bit the particles are consistently "tracking" the 3d boundary of the turbulent noise, but in 64bit they go kinda crazy. I am using the current release version of box3 for this (1.07)

I have a strange thing going on here using box3 to bind particles on a moving surface. After time the particles seem to align to triangulated face edges... What happens here is: Particles get generated from a certain pattern (electric procedural map) and depending on a radius they try to find a target by script vector(grayscale) that is defined by yet another procedural map. so they morph from pattern A to pattern B over time. works all great when the plane is flat and not moving what so ever. then i add a noise modifier to it to have a wavy motion going on so i need to stick the particles to the surface obviously there for the sticky OP i posted below...

This is my first attempt at using and understanding the data operator... so please be gentle :) I know this should be very simple, but I can't work out how to give a particle a spiral path. I would assume I want to take the initial speed vector... then add an offset (x * particle age) to define an ever tightening spiral.... although my limited understanding of vector math might be leading me astray! Can anyone give me any hints as to how I might go about setting up the data operator to achieve a spiralling behaviour? thanks

Im trying to set up a glass breaking effect where an object pushes through the glass in slow mo and pushes out the pieces. I have box 3 and would like the pieces to slowley align to the normals of the geometry for 10 or so frames while the objects push out then use that rotation as a spis axis after the 10 frames. So im relly trying to do some dynamics style thing but I want it in a particle system to keep some controll over it. Is this possible in Box 3? Cheers, Jordan Walsh

Hello! I want to transform one object (editable poly) into another using 25x25x25cm-cubes as particles. The cubes should dock onto the surface of the target object, and cover it's 3-dimensional surface completely and not overlap one another. I solved this with Allan McKays tutorial (http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/tut_ObjAB.avi). I have created vertices as docking points, but the amount of vertices (and so the amount of particles) on the source differs from the target object. So, let's say my source object has 1850 vertices and the target object consists of 1690 vertices. The 1850 particles should travel from the source object to the target object but change amount to 1690 while traveling. I bought pflow box#3 because i read something about the "change amount"-operator. But know, i think I should study electrical engineering before using this plugin (all those strange circuit-looking buttons and wires :roll:)... Another problem I have is, that when the particles reach their end position on the target object, they don't align from bottom to top (like a normal gravity-behavior) but they align randomly. So, some particles travel through other particles and i don't want any inter-particle collisions. Can anyone help me please? Thanks Tobi

I have a setup i cached thru the full timeline for viewport and render. the cache file is 95MB in size. its only one file instead of one file for every frame...wired! in the attahced image u see 5 files because i tried 5 times... i unchecked "cache test results" after the caching went thru :( still doesn´t take the cache into account AT ALL...really annoying. i never get cache to work properly no real help :( or im really stupid :D [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aVPVPZA][img]http://www.postimage.org/aVPVPZA.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq1yj9UA][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq1yj9UA.jpg[/img][/url]

is there a way to control object visibility with box#3? i have a few windows i wanna collapse when a group selection tests true. right now i use a script operator from a tutorial on allan´s first dvd. that works fine it´s just that it sets ALL glass windows to invisible instead of the tested ones...maybe someone can help out here with another max script trick or box#3? [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aVaJg7i][img]http://www.postimage.org/aVaJg7i.jpg[/img][/url] [code:1]on ChannelsUsed pCont do ( pCont.useFloat = true ) on Init pCont do ( $glass_*.visibility = on -- resets glass to be visible at start -- note, if this isn't working, it's cause inherit visiblity is on (glass.inheritVisibility = off) ) on Proceed pCont do ( -- MASS count = pCont.NumParticles() for i in 1 to count do ( -- mass start pCont.particleIndex = i pCont.particleFloat = 1.0/(random .2 1) ) -- mass end -- Glass object visiblity toggle count = pCont.NumParticles() for i in 1 to count do ( -- border collision start pCont.particleIndex = i if pCont.particleNew then ( $glass_*.visibility = 0 -- turn glass off ) -- close this area ) --border collision end ) on Release pCont do ( )[/code:1]

Hy Orbaz community, i was wondering if localize or box#3 could actually localize a vortex spin to a cone? i have a cone that is animated with a path deform modifier and want to emit vortex spinning particles from it to create a tornado/twister kinda storm. I bet charley has an idea! and johnny! [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2ckQZ0][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2ckQZ0.jpg[/img][/url]

I want to emit paticles from a certain object and move them into splines line but in order of spline point ID. So, the particle should make a line from bottom to top or from the first point of the spline to the last point of the spline. Thx!!

Hi, Very new to Box 3 (and very excited about it!!). I just wanted to quickly set up a preset that make gravity affect smaller particles less. Whats the best way to go about this? Cheers! Jordan Walsh

Hi, I'm makking a particle system which will be rendered using Afterburn. Apparently Afterburn 4.0 can use data channels made by Cebas Thinking Particles. Can Afterburn 4.0 use PFlow data operators? Appreciate any help, Cheers,

Hi all This is an email referring to a previous problem I have asked about on this forum. It is regarding the Operators turning themselves off and on when setting out a network render. I didn't have a file I could post as the size and complexity of the scene meant it was difficult to pin down the problem but I have now managed to isolate a p-flow which has caused the problem (sort of) I have describe. http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/download/cs/orbaz/partdisprob.zip This is a very large file 105mb as it contains large bitmaps Problem: When loading this scene I have found that the operators I have created appear as if they aren't working, I turn the p-flow off then on and they appear to start working again. This causes a big problem when network rendering as the machines will just render what they first open. This seems to be a bit random as I have tested it again and it is now working when you load up the scene. So it appears to work periodically. All I can say is that operator setup works randomly. I have noticed this happen with a large number of scenes I have made whether they use the same operators or not. Thanks for any help that you can give. Phil

Hi again I have another problem but this time I have an example file showing whats going on. http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/download/cs/orbaz/partprob.zip Problem explained: First off the file I have provided is taking one pflow system from a much more complicated scene. to highlight the issue. The P-flow could be remade but as I don't want to remake everything in the old scene without knowing if the problem will arise again I am sending an example with a hope to getting it solved. Now the problem. My scene started to get very slow when working with my particles, turning them off and on etc and select by name was taking ages. If I went to select all objects it would list over 2000 when the viewable amount was less than 20. Also the amount of particles at birth seems to not reprecent the actually particles being created. See below [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV15yhWi][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV15yhWi.jpg[/img][/url] I have tried cleaning the particle system but there still seems to be an abnormal amount of objects in the scene. Note the orginal scene cleaned over 2000 items but they seem to recreate when the scene was saved and reloaded. Any ideas anyone. All the best Philip Day

hy everybody, i only have the boxes on my workstation notebook but need the localize operator for an effect. Is there a mayscripted version as sctip operator or so i have overseen maybe? thanks in advance and kind regards, anselm

Does Box3 have some kind of Subframe Sampling like Pflow itself? Quick example. The particles should stop, if they hit a surface. With standard Pflow tools (Udeflector, stop at collision) this works very fast (realtime with 10k particles) and accurate (particles stop exactly at the surface). But if I try to achieve the same with Box3, I have to set the Integration Steps to a very low value (1-4 ticks) to get the same accuracy and this takes more than 100 times longer to calculate. Thanks in advance! Thomas

Running 3ds max 2008 64-bit on Windows x64 and PFlow Box#3 Demo. I am trying to evaluate Box#3, but whenever I try to add suboperators in Data View, my Max crashes. It's a fresh install without any additional plugins.Any help would be appreciated.

I get an error message or a crash if I link [b]Collision Point[/b] into [b]Point Normal[/b]. [b]Assertion Error Information[/b] In File:'.\PFSubopGeometry.cpp' Line: 3163 or In File:'.\PFSubopGeometry.cpp' Line: 3195 [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aVXWG5S][img]http://www.postimage.org/aVXWG5S.jpg[/img][/url]

I have a scene that spawns particles to a new event, at which point they are deleted after their lifespan gets to 1. It renders correctly. When the slider is still, it only display the parent. When I pusht he play button the display updates correctly all the way through. This looks like a priority problem? Maybe a history pre/post deal?

Hi all I've been creating operators to use in my scene examples of which can be found here: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6938#6938 and have been finding that the operators are turning themselves off and on during a network render. But when submitting to a network render (currently rendering with 10 machines on network) the machines will randomly render operators on or off. Once rendering right or wrong it will continue to render that way until reloading the scene. Other things to note is that it would sometime work or not work when loading up the scene on the local machine but playing round with it would get it working again, sometimes. When it didn't render correctly on a machine it would be all of the operators in that scene would fail not random ones off or on, as far as I can tell. It’s difficult to provide examples as it appears to be happening within all scenes that are using operators and not consistently with any particular operator. Computer details Max version 9 running in 64 bit Windows xp 64 bit All intel based machines. running 4 gb memory If there is any other information that would be useful reply and I’ll post up the information. Best regards Philip Day

Hi - i'm spawning particles based on distance between two objects. Then test current spawn and send to next event. The viewport displays correct, but when I render I have way too many particles. When I look at the Data View, and show data it gives me: [code:1]149 particles in 2 groups ============================= 141 particles in group #1 ---------------------------------------------------------- Index / Value 0 False 1 True 2 True 3 True 4 True 5 True .............. 140 True ============================= 8 particles in group #2 ---------------------------------------------------------- Index / Value 0 False 1 True 2 True 3 True 4 True 5 True 6 True 7 True[/code:1] So Group #2 is what is displaying in the viewport and what I want. I have no idea where group #1 is coming from. Can you explain how groups are created like this which may help me locate my error? Khye

Is there a way to choose say every 3rd particle after a input-birth index, and send it to another stream? (sorry if my terminology isn't correct quite new to this box#3 stuff) I would like to choose say every third, fifth, and seventh particle and send them to different functions. Is this possible in the data view or would it be smarter to do it with split amount tests in the flow, then adding a data op for the particles that in the new event? Thanks, John

Is there a way to construct "Number of Particles at absolute time x" in box 3? Khye

Hi Folks, I'm doing a quick shot where a lot of quite long bricks form into a bridge and I'm doing it by making the bridge disassemble, baking the animation and then reversing the fcurves. One issue I'm getting though is that the bricks use speed space follow and immediately they lift off form their starting positions they snap into a different rotation very quickly which looks bad since they're quite long - is there any way to gradually blend in a speed space follow operator over 20 frames maybe by working out the speed space rotation in parallel but only applying 20% of its value? I'm only really starting in box#3 now so apologies if it's a dumb question. Cheers, John p.s. took ages to write this, the forum gave an error and said my post went to hell :D

So I've set up a network to allow me more control over the variation of the initial scales of my particles. The problem is when I advance through frames the scale keeps changing because the randoms that I am using get new values. I thought that I could prevent this by plugging a New In Event into the conditional input of the Output Standard that is going to the scale, but that did not seem to work. Is what I'm trying to do possible? And if so where am I going wrong? thanks! Tim

I have finished the job and start the render fase. I have read in the website that there is a "read only" version of BOX #3, but I can't found any other info for this, neither in this forum nor in the help file. So my cuestion is very simple: Is there any way of using BOX #3 in a render "lamb" of my render farm? And if yes: What is the instalation procedure? As usual, forgive my bad english :oops: Thanks.

I'm currently new to Particle flow box 3 but I seem to be having trouble with a flow I'm trying to create. What I am after is an operator that affects the particle size based on the distance from an object. I've managed to create the flow but as the particle distance goes below 0 it starts to scale the other way. I solved this by added a condition that checked to see if it hit 0. This seems to work except when the object gets a curtain distance away when the particles are suddenly affected again, I think this is when false is returned on all particles. I've provided 3 images of the flow to illistrate my point. I think I'm not using the conditions things right, any ideas? All the best Phil [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq4tP0_S][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq4tP0_S.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq4tPdtA][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq4tPdtA.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq4tPfYJ][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq4tPfYJ.jpg[/img][/url]

I have been playing around with the demo version for last month until my boss have decided purchase the comercial one. But the problem observed in the demo persisted. I'm trying to get a particle system that collects a second one. I need the "collecter" system be distributed in several events. It's acomplished in two steps for the "collectable" particle system: [list][*]A data operator read the closest particle in the "collecter" system and writes its id in a new channel, and its position in the script vector channel. A find target operator in "no control" mode does the job to send particles to de next event. [*]In the second event, another data operator reads the particle id from the previously saved channel and do some math to set the TM of the particle relative to the indexed one, to "link" the "collected" particle to its parent "collecter" one.[/list:u] I'm having troubles with both two steps and I think its due to the same thing. In the first step the proxy particle subop only retrieves info from the particles living in the first non-empty event. In the second step the saved index seems not refers to the same particle when the particles travels from one event to the next. I think that the input proxy cannot find the given particle in the first non empty event, and returns an identity matrix, instead of look for it in any other events in the flow. Showing the saved data and particle ID's with a display data op, I can see that the indexes are consistent, but it doesn't work, and I cannot figure out what am I doing wrong. Forgive my bad English, and I hope you can understand me. [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq2IfgTS][img]http://www.postimage.org/Pq2IfgTS.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2IEkT0][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2IEkT0.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV2IExlJ][img]http://www.postimage.org/aV2IExlJ.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi there, [size=18]I need help with something very badly[/size]..... I have a fish with thorns coming out of his body.....In this case a Blowfish....and if you have seen Finding nemo or Shark tale then I want something like that...say the thorns coming out of his body and orienting along the contours of his body and all of the spikes should be pointing in the direction of his tail....and all the thorns should be pointing out from the normals of the polygons.....I have tried a lot but cant seem to get it right...Sorry I cant post the scene file due to confidentiality..but I am posting my PFlow layout here [img]http://img195.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=44366_Blowfish_122_529lo.jpg[/img] Regards, Entrancea

Hi, Could anybody enlighten me where is Lock/Bond in Box #3 or what operator(tester) replaces it? Thank you in advance H.

Hi there, I'm making an operator that creates animated "lines" I made a prototype with the script operator and now I'm re-making it in #Box3 to see how I get on. My main problem is, the vector to the next particle seems to be "wrong" can anyone take a look at my flow and see where I'm going wrong? Regards, Rhys. [img]http://www.filamentvfx.co.nz/dump/vine_prob01.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.filamentvfx.co.nz/dump/vine_prob02.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.filamentvfx.co.nz/dump/vine_prob03.jpg[/img]

Hi. I used to go with the speed by surface & rot space speed space follow method in the past. But speed by surface is very slow, so I would prefer to use another way utilizing pflow box3. Ideally, this solution would also work for alignment to animated surfaces (particles dont move on the surface, they are sticky). Can anyone give me a hint how to accomplish that? Did someone do that already? thanks! michael

hi, i want particles to find target on an object by greyscalemap (the particles go first to the brighter areas) for some kind of growing effect. i found some kind of scripting solutions in the forum but i´m looking for a solution with box3, because of high particle count. any ideas? thank you smes

i´ve got the following problem: i want to distort particles which are attached to a geometry. the effect i want to achieve is the folowing: i want to be able to apply a turbulence on a very small area of particles. additionally i want to be able to animate the distortion / turbulence. Afterwords the particles should find there original postion on the geometry. The look i want to achieve is a breathing like movement. any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

The getName() method from the DataViewItem Interface returns random garbage characters in the beginning of the name or no name at all. To reproduce: Create a Data Icon Test, drag an Icon sub-operator (but it happens with any Box #3 master operator and any sub-operator). [code:1]dataop = $'Data Icon Test 01' $Data_Icon_Test:Data Icon Test 01 @ [0.000000,0.000000,0.000000] showInterfaces dataop.SubOperators[1] Interface: DataViewItem Properties: Methods: <bool>hasComments() <string>getComments() <void>setComments <string>comments <string>getName() <void>setName <string>name Actions: OK for i = 1 to 10 do print (dataop.SubOperators[1].getName()) "Hon Pivot" ">on Pivot" "Jon Pivot" "8on Pivot" "6on Pivot" "Bon Pivot" ",on Pivot" "<on Pivot" "*on Pivot" " on Pivot" OK [/code:1] As you can see, each time you call getName(), a different garbage character is returns (there is a second non-printable character visible after the first one and before the 'on'). Setting the name using .setName() does not help. Looks, walks and sounds like a bug ;)

I'm creating a system where particles connect to points. The position is using their birth index to tell them what step between the two points they belong. the equation would look like: [code:1] distance = length p2-p1 n1 = normalize (p2-p1) step = 1.0/distance weight = birthindex position = (distance*n1*step*birthIndex) + p1 [/code:1] This works great until the points start to move. I have a Spawn Additive that test of the number of particles is less than the distance that it needs to spawn more particles to fill in the gap. If false, then the extra particles are deleted. Again, this works great. the problem occurs when I have 100 particles, the last 5 get deleted and then I need to add 5 more. Instead of acquiring indexes that were deleted previously (96,97,98,99,100) they acquire indexes that haven't ever been used (101,102,103,104,105). This throws the whole stepping function out the window. Can anyone think of a solution? Khye

Hy all, i´m playing with box#3 a lil since i have some spare time. i was wondering if i can control the size at the shipped max file "SizeByColor" only in one direction if i need that. Lets say a checkbox for only Width and one for only Height if thats possible. ATM i´m messing with he data flow and need some help with the height ONLY control... the future plan: controling height/width by a noisemap that is controled by sound to have a 3dimensional amplitude... maybe someone wants to jump in? sounds fun to me at least ;) kind regards, anselm

Hi Oleg, I have a particle system consisting of an initial event giving birth to particles and placing them onto an object and a Collision Test sending out particles to a second Event. For reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, I wanted to create a mirror system which creates the same particle count with exactly the same settings but without the collision / event. It simply uses a Data Operator to steal the Transformation Matrix of each particle by Born ID and assign it to its counterpart in the second system, thus mirroring exactly the motion of the source particles. Turns out that particles that have moved to the second event show up with a TM channel value of identity matrix, which brings those mirror particles to the origin. Of course, I could be missing something, but using a simple script that copies the TM by ID from the one system to the other behaves correctly (albeit many times slower). Since this is for an actual movie project we are finishing right now, a solution with Box 3 would be much better as we don't have much time to waste... Thanks for any insight. Cheers, Bobo

whats the logic behind speed by travel distance and the step size? I'm spawning in box 3 but it seems very dependent on the integration step. I'm assumeing its find position at frame 1 find position at frame 2 then spawn X particles in a line between position 1 and position 2? anyone do this?

Hy Comminity, Bobo just posted a Box#3/Krakatoa Tutorial about Particle Color by Speed: http://www.franticfilms.com/software/support/krakatoa/particle_color_by_speed_using_dataflow.php Maybe u wanna have a look :) kind regards, Anselm

This is an indespensible resource to understand the fundamentals of the math of box 3 [url]http://chortle.ccsu.edu/VectorLessons/vectorIndex.html[/url]

having worked in houdini a bit i really like the use of digital assets with in it. now the question is, could i make a tool, or like a pre canned effect then say have someone else access this without box 3? The user then could only make changes in the ui made for the effect. they could not actually edit the data flow and what not since they would not have box 3.

What would pflow have to update when I try to render if I already have pflow cached to disk? I find it still has to go through and update quite a bit before it will move on and render.

orthongolization = cross product and scallr product = dot product? I need to build a rotation axis out of 2 positions

Hi, i wonder how I can attach free spot lights to pflow particles with toolbox3. Any tips? thanks! michael

How does Box 3 handle shape? for instance dealing with shape instances, spheres, cubes ect can I construct a shape from size volume and surface area?

-- Challenge starts Wednesday Aug 1st and finishes Aug 7th -- :: Your mission should you choose to accept it 'Particle churn and vortex churn' using Box#3 :: Examples of this would be kicking a football through smoke, a fighter jet flying low over a dusty flat plane or through a column of smoke. Heres a few small images to wet your appetites. [url=http://upload2.postimage.org/38421/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload2.postimage.org/38421/Churn.jpg[/img][/url] Post Finished Images and video links in this thread. In addition you could post images of your particle flows and even links to your max files. That way everyone can learn from everyone else's methods of solving the problem. post other challenge ideas here :- http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6203#6203

how many are down? I think this would be a good way to learn box 3

I'm trying to create particles per vertex on multiple objects. My first problem is that the 'Geometry' operator when set to 'number of verticies' only returns the value for the first object in the 'select Object' operator. And my second problem is that the 'geometry' operator when in 'vertex position' mode has no 'designate object' input. Must say I'm a little stumped on how to do this without having a data flow for each object that has surface particles. Any ideas on how to combat this? Thanks

I am attempting to learn box 3 by breaking down the original operators and trying to get them to work. In position object operator, it has the option inherit emitter movement. How would i break this down in box 3? Is the trick to adjust magnitude and speed assigned per frame? I am attempting to make a speed operator with a few extra features. Thanks.

Some sub-operators, like Closest Particle Postion or Density Gradient may not find any particles within their vicinity to evaluate to make their data from. In such cases, however, they still output data. In the case of Closest Particle Position, it is 0,0,0. In the case of Density Gradient, 1,0,0. If I use that data in my flow, however, it makes for bad results. The nearest particle is NOT in fact at 0,0,0, it is simply outside the range of the vicinity. I thought about filtering by converting the vectors to reals and making a condition where it tests false if less than .0001 or something, but in some cases the nearest particle may in fact BE at 0,0,0 or the density gradient may be 1,0,0. This reduces the artifacts, but it's awkward and doesn't eliminate them. Any ideas? - Chad

Don't hit me if this has already been asked. =) Do the presets have to be installed on each network render box for them to work?

Hi, I've just upgraded to Max 9, and installed and authorized Box 3. I've downloaded some of the barter hall presets (nice work people!), but I cant get them to load in Max! :cry: I read the post stating that the presets should be in: C:\Documents and Settings\(Adiministrator or User name)\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\9 - 32bit\enu\plugcfg However, I do not have this folder - I have no local settings folder! Reading on, I see I can alter the config file to specify a different location, so I added the lines: [Presets] PresetDir = C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 9\plugcfg\Particle Flow Data Presets ...and pasted my barter hall presets here, saved, restarted max, and still cannot see them! Creating a Data Preset only gives four of the presets as options, while creating a Data operator and choosing Load Preset shows all of the originally supplied presets. None of the ones I've added though! Forgive me if I'm being stupid, but how the heck do I use these presets? Thanks Zack.

hy community, this might be a plane stupid question *ducks&covers* but how can i load a cache disk sequence on to a flow after i re-opened the scene, restarted max due to a crash or just because it´s a new workday? kindest regards, anselm

I have a Data Op in one Flow grabbing particle data from a Proxy Flow. Everything is working great as long as I keep the proxy particles in one event. As soon as I pass the Proxy Flow into a new event (by Collision), it falls apart. I seem to remember reading about issues relating to this somewhere (Id's perhaps...?), but I cannot remember exactly why this may cause problems. Does anyone know why, and perhaps even know a good solution? Thanks.

Hi, I'm new here (actually new in the forum and with the plugin). But I need someone help me. I need to do something like the mummy effect (the wave) or the Sandman in Spiderman 3. I know, is something that only great Animation Studios know how to do, but if someone could give me some tips or tricks about it would b great. Is for a Personal Project. Thnks!!! 8)

Dear Orbaz Community, i wanna do a Domino effect similar to the one in the Demo File but how to change the Shape Instance? if i just pick a new shape in the shape instance operator the shape changes but the entire animation wouldn´t work anymore even if i animate the new shape exact the same as the Domino Cube already being in the scene. when i leave everything as it is and just pick a new path (normalised and vertex welded spline with edit poly modifier) in the data operator it wouldn´t work either :cry: :cry: the plot: i have a company logo made of splines and wanna have a domino chain reaction out of DVD cases on it. just like the PFLOW drawing in the demo file... sorry for being stupid! kindest regards, anselm

I was thinking how I'd like to share more in the barter hall, but it seems a lot of my data operators come after a script operator. More than not I am using it to get scene data, creating arrays and pushing them to the built in channels (integer, float). This prevents me from uploading a preset as it requires a script that would have to be executed. My two solutions are 1) to add a pre-eval script option to a data operator. This would need to be editable as scene objects would be different from one scene to the next. 2) Add a script suboperator. This would be inside the data op so you could execute the script. Is there another method to easily link a script operator or evaluation to data op, or more helpful, to a preset? Not a hot issue but something to think about when the box2 is uploading. Khye

Hi, I need proxy particles from very complex flow. It works fine what I did except few frames were particles going from one event to an other. In this small test scene U can see, the proxy particles are there till frame 10, on frame 11 they all in pos 0,0,0 and after frame 11 they always one frame behind the original particles. I've tried Global Variables, Integration Step and some other things but nothing works properly. http://www.b3d-animations.com/tmp/proxy_f10.jpg http://www.b3d-animations.com/tmp/proxy_f11.jpg http://www.b3d-animations.com/tmp/proxy_f12.jpg regards, Bandu PS: thanks Oleg for your offer but doing myself lets me more understand this stuff! :-)

hey guys, sorry - I'm going to have tons of questions until it sinks in... ;) today we're trying to blend nearby particle size values together... similar to shown in the picture. thanks! image: [url]http://machine3d.com/pflow/average_nearby_values.jpg[/url] test file: [url]http://machine3d.com/pflow/average_nearby_values_pflow.zip[/url]

Is there a way to test the value of light affecting a particle? couldn't find anything in the box 1 or 3 help files... thanks

Hi all, Isn't there a script or utility or something to convert Pflow or Max particles to Maya's .pdc or Realflow's .bin formats? The Realflow format would be preferred... thanks!

Hi Oleg, Thanks for the help on the cache bits an pieces, it seems to be stable now in the other setups I've used it in. One thing that's quite handy is the option to exclude data dn post cache operators but I've noticed that if I exclude scale data and use it as a post cache op, it doesnt fully support it. for example if I use a shape op and a scale operator afterwards, the shape op changes fine with the cache, and the scale variation looks fine as the cache is updating. When I got to change the scale values after caching though, the main scale value only works in absolute mode, and the scale variation controls are ignored. It'd be one of the things I'd like to tweak at the moment since pflows scale has the bias controls that afterburn doesnt to control the size of little puffs of smoke - any thoughts on why this is happening? there's a small scene file up at http://www.joconnell.com/uploads/pf/scale_variation_prob_01.zip as a check. Cheers! John

Hi, i tried to stop my particles when they reach a object in the scene with the suboperators in Box3 Demo. As you can see in the attached image, the condition operator gives a correct output, but the filtered speed scalar still gives the same output, oltough the filter says false. have i wired something wrong?? and is there a if ELSE condition possibility? i think i could make a function which adds two speed scalars, value 1 and 0, and then filter the operator with the 1 value. I think this way i could make the particles stop. but now the filtering does not work for me. why? [url=http://upload7.postimage.org/733777/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload7.postimage.org/733777/Problem.jpg[/img][/url]

Hi Folks, I got box #3 a while back to add a few new tricks but largely for the cache disk op since preparing particles was taking bugger ages in vray (might also be a vray issue). I've noticed that on max 8 sp3 that cache disk has a very large tendency to crash either on updating or when I add the operator itself - most of the time it's added into the top node of the flow to cache the entrie thing. Here's the latest file I've had crash - any thoughts? http://www.joconnell.com/uploads/pf/cache_disk_crash_01.zip

Box#3 still updates the entire flow after i cached with files. i put the cache in the root event of the flow and set my custom range. after caching pflow when i scub the timeline or hit render it still updates every frame manually. is there a special way i can recall my cached files? kind regards anselm

Hi, Does Box 3 or Box 1 have an operator that will create a mesh using projected UV texture coordinates, like Realflow's Texture Gizmo? Imagine you have two objects, a strawberry and an orange (both high-res textured) -- we want to fill the strawberry volume with particles and have them break away like a liquid and then form the textured orange... can Box 3 do this? e.g. Can it blend multiple texture maps on a Blobmesh-style object? (like Realflow's "Texture Gizmo" and mesh texture blending, except RF appears to only handle 1 texture map...) thanks!

Dear Orbaz Community, i´m currently playing with the shape collision scene file. everything wotks like in the demo scene when the shapes collide with n even plane and a default deflector. but i wanna create some avalance kinda evect to learn shape offsetting. I ceated a noisy slightly bended plane as ground/cliff and a simple Udeflector as collision object. Without the data operator from the demo scene the rocks collide and bounce slightly as expected (of cause with interpenetration up to the pivot center). when i turn on the data operator the rocks collide properly only one time and bounce away to "eternity" in their given angle of reflection (nearly 45°...). i think i miss some serious step :( maybe one can enlighten me? kind regards anselm PS: Sorry that i don´t post any file or image but i´m not at home atm (created the scene while i was traveling on train...).

Wow, it's been a while since I've been back in MAX. I'm running into a problem I seem to remember solving with Box #3 a while ago. I have a mesh that I need to cover with particles in a uniform grid distibution. Unfortunately the mesh isn't uniform, so I can't do a simple PostionObject > Vert or Faces. The ultimate goal is to place particles uniformly on the surface as small cubes that more or less touch, and scale them to zero to 100% based on a gradient map (think of a pin board). Does anyone remember how to do a uniform distribution on a surface?

still new to box#3 i want to create a spinner that lets you choose a map channel. i´m currently upgrading the SizebyColor.max data preset... cheers anselm

Hy community, first of all i´m quite new to box#3. :oops: :? i started creating custom operator nodes for a current project. if i want to change some stuff inside the operator do i have to re-expose the data operator or is there a way to simply edit the already existing one? and where does box#3 save the new operators? because i want to copy it to a max9 installation as well (created the operator with max8...)? hope i´m not too noobish atm :D kind regards anselm

I seem to recall reading a post on this at some time, but I can't seem to find it, so I appologize if this has been delt with somewhere else. But there seems to be a 12 parameter limit on the expose. I have an operator that needs more than 12, is there a way to do this? Right now my only solution (which does work for this case) is to break the operator into 2 operators. And I suppose while I am on the topic of exposing, can the expose window be made to be resizeable? If you have a lot of data with potential exposures the list can get long when scrolling through to find what your after.

Hi, I am starting to learn the Data Operators in PFlow Box #3, and I wonder if someone could help me getting started. I am trying to make a particle move with a random speed in the Y direction. So I try to connect a random node to the Y component of a Vector, but that just makes it shake. How can I make random "stand still", so that each particle is locked to a non-changing random speed? Thanks! Rune

Can someone confirm/deny if Visual Studio Express (free) 2005 has the needed functionality to work with the Box 3 SDK? Khye

In tool box 3 demo i have a random walk operatorand some other made by blur, and some good preset flow, made by Allan Mckay. In box 3 demo for max 9 i haven't those operator. I can't remember if i download that operator/preset individually and where i can find it. Can you help me please? Thanks :)

Is there a way to have the [b]Closest Point By Surface[/b] operator only return points that are in the "line of sight" of a particle? Say, using the particle's speed vector with a given radius? Martijn

This is a simplified version of a bubble system I've made. The bubbles are usually rising so I need to detect when bubbles leave the object and delete them, I check to see if the bubbles are inside the object and delete the ones returning false. My problem is when the object containing the bubbles rotates a portion of the bubbles are deleted even thought they are inside the object. I am constraining the particles to the object the way I have because in the complete system I need to interpolate between the transforms of different parts of the object as the bubbles rise. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? [url]http://www.users.on.net/~exerion/_/Geometry%20-%20Inside%20Object%20Problem.max[/url] Thanks :)

I have a data op that is influncing the the force op. the data op is super simple, a random set to uniform wired to output set to scritp float. Before enabling the script float on the force I was using a infulence of 700 wanting some varation I set the random data op min max to 650-750 I check the data and get # between 650 - 750 as expected. but... the result in the viewport is as if I set the Force to 3000-5000. any ideas? cheers

hello, trying to create a box 3 op that contols opacity based on birth. part is born 0% opacity over 100 frames reaches 0% any ideas? head hurts fromwall bouncing! cheers

Hi guys, I am about to buy Box#3 and i just need to know how many copies/ Licenses we will need, for a medium studio with 5-10 workstations and 30+ render machines. What is the general installation proceedure for farm machines? can they be reference from a central server in the plugin.ini? Are they all floating licenses for use between workstations? Any help on this would be great. Cheers

Can any one describe the best practice for varying a vector in Box 3, identical to how Divergence works in the Speed Operator? Thanks, Khye

can I get a face selection in box 3 based on object distance. I can get change based on distance, just cant figure out the face select aspect. cheers sam

I'm sure plenty of people have created all sorts of fun and useful operators and presets, why is no one posting them? Don't want to give away there precious work? Don't think there work is worth posting? My excuse is that I'm new to Box#3 and I'm working 7 days a week and have no time atm. My biggest worry about posting in the Barter Hall is that my work is lame :shock:

Hi :) I've done quite a lot of test work for a job in the demo of Box#3. I was able to achieve what we needed so we bought Box#3. To what extent do I need to recreate my demo Box#3 flow to get it working in the commercial version? Should I create the whole flow again or just the Box#3 operators? ...can I just remake the sub-operator flows within the Box#3 operators? ...do all the sub-operators need to be replaced? My flow has 12 Box#3 operators and er ~120 sub-operators so any way to speed up the transition would be very much appreciated. I was also wondering how to get access to the Support/Download section? Thanks

Hey - thought I'd share with you guys. This constrains particles to the edges of a mesh in their travel. . . took a lot longer to figure out than I first anticipated: [img]http://www.khye.com/max/box3/POC_edgeConstraint.jpg[/img] [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/1801988/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/1801988/POC_edgeConstraint.jpg[/img][/url] You can download a rendered avi at www.khye.com/max/box3/edgeConstraint_energy.avi I used Ky Trails effect for the finished avi. I'll see if i can't get it made into a preset for the barter hall. Khye

Im trying to get parts to emit from a surface at every vert, fly off and reform. this works till I animate the emmiter any ideas [url=http://www.giantapestudios.com/pflow/reform.max]reform.max[/url] sam

[b]Euler Angle[/b] rotations seem reversed. I'm new to Box#3 so sorry if I'm just missing something. [url]http://www.users.on.net/~exerion/_/Euler_Angles_Rotation_Problem_v01.max[/url] [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/1705030/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/1705030/Euler_Angles_Rotation_Problem.jpg[/img][/url] Thanks :)

I can't get [b]Closest Vertex[/b] to work correctly. It returns unexpected numbers inconsistantly. What am I doing wrong? [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/1698958/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/1698958/dang.jpg[/img][/url] Thanks :)

This is taken out of the mel help file. [i]Synopsis linstep <float> <float> <float> This command returns a floating point value between zero and one representing what percentage of the distance between the first and second arguments is represented by the third argument. The first and second arguments represent minimum and maximum values respectively. If the third argument is less than the minimum, the command returns zero. If the third argument is greater than the maximimum value, the command returns one. Return value float Examples linstep 1 3 2; // Result: 0.5 // linstep 1 3 5; // Result: 1 // linstep 1 3 2.5; // Result: 0.75 //[/i] Thanks :)

Can we get the second closest particle? By somehow creating a per-particle filter? Thanks, Ben.

These are my wishes. I can call number of neighbors. But I can't get the indecies of all the neighbors. For that, I would need an array datatype. And to work on an that array, we would need a for-each type operation. It is also impossible to keep trying random numbers like in the position object operator. We would need a while-do metaphor. Just some thoughts. If anyone has ideas about how to work around these limitations, I like to hear about them. Ben.

Not sure if u can use expressions in box 3, and if so, how? lots of questions of late! why? its that RnD time of year, more fun than Christmas! heh cheers

Hi guys :) Ok for starters I'll give you an idea of what I'm trying to achieve. I'm spraying particles on to an object that is translating. I want them to stick to the object, translate with the object and build up volume as more is sprayed. I have so far managed to attach the colliding particles to the translating object. Detect when a air born particles come into range of 3 or more attaches particles. What I'm having troubles with is sending out the particles from the first event when they come in contact with the particles from the second event. At the moment when air born particles from the first event come in contact with particles with the second event their scale is adjusted so I can see if everything else is working. I am playing with the Box3 demo. From what I've read this shouldn't be inhibiting anything I'm trying to do. [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/1647813/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/1647813/Sticky_01.jpg[/img][/url]

I love disk cache. Seriously. It's saved my life so many times. Unfortunately, I'm now attempting to spin out the disk cache data on my particles out of pflow back into geometry. Crazy, I know. Lets just say it involves a certain renderer whos 3d motion blur doesn't deal with particles yet. I've been trying to adapt bobo's script tutorial on the subject (http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs5/pflow/pflow__MovingObjects.htm), which I've used sucessfully when dealing with pointcache data, but can anyone point me in the right direction (if there IS a direction) when dealing with Box3 Disc Cache PFC data? Thanks! Mike

or something like that. basicly I want to be able to set up a system (like fire) but have the movement be unaffected by the emmiter animation, sort of. ok I will explain by way of a houdini example http://www.snotbubble.com/cpb/Transform_psys.mov (may need to cut n paste in explorer) the one on the right is what i am going for. I have something sort of working using select object object- set to object tm convert- set to matrix - vector output standard -set to position vector but this only kinda works. cheers sam

I'd like to have the particles in an event be used as an object. So I want to get prevalent speed of some particles in another event. How would I do that? Actually, this goes to another problem I have... I have a collision operator, and I want the particles that test true for the collision be used in the data operator. So I want to get the speed of the particles after they collide to be used to influence the particles that did not collide, to get a sort of stretchy tearing effect. But I can't seem to find a way to filter by the collision, or have it set any data channel. Nor can I filter by event. - Chad

What exactly is the vector/vector operation Orthogonalization? Most of the others are self explanatory, but I must have been sick when we learned this one. Google was no help. I'm looking for something that will allow me to take a vector (speed) and a vector (normal) and output the vector resulting from the intersection of the two, ie, when something bounces off a surface. Orthogonalization does something like this, but I still don't know what it is. - Chad

I was just looking through the help file for Box 3 and noticed the updates to Shape Instance and Age Test operators. Sounds great....but where are they?? I'm running box 3 v1.02, Max 7.5, XP Pro. I assume the new options would have been added to the standard operator, but I can't see anything new. The shape instance update sounds like exactly what I need right now..... Please HELP!!!! Z.

Is there any way to wire the maximum for a random sub op. I want to randomly choose a particle, and i want the maximum to be the # of particles. But that will vary over the span of the animation. Khye

When using the expose parameter dialog and having at least 2 items added: when you select the added parameters can you auto update the [i]label: [/i]field to the selected parameter. I consistently rename parameters on accident and the solution is me retyping in the name in the label field every time i switch to it which is very annoying. Khye

How do i go about moving parts towards a defined point. For simplicty lets just use a simple example I have a cylinder in the center of a column of moving parts, i want the ones on the out side to be slowly drawn to the center. I able to define which parts are on the outside, but i am unable to get them to move toward the object. Idealy I will have the parts move toward the center of the volume, but for ease toward a object is good. thx

Asked this one before, wanted to know if thier was a update. Spawn particles from a disk cached event, effect with forces tests ect, and have only these spawned particles calulatated, not the whole flow. The way it works right now this is not possible. Though I was sure it did work like that at one point during the beta, but maybe that was just wishfull thinking. The reason for this: emiting particles from a point cache character is real slow, so if this works it would speed up work flow massivley cheers sam

I've been wondering how it might be possible to completely fill a volume with non-overlapping particles. I can easilly compute the number of particles needed by dividing the object volume by the particle size, in a Funcion sub-operator. The only problem left is positioning them correctly. Geometry: Random Volume Point can easilly be output to Position, but this is too random. Is there a general way to generate uniform, non-random positions within a volume? Thanks! Fred Lewis

I'm trying to create a sort of noise field that's just a low frequency wobble, constrained to specific axes. I've done this already in the past with the Random sub-op, but now I'm looking for something more akin to multiplying the speed vector by a sine function. Anyone have a clue how to go about doing this? A low frequency noise doesn't seem to be working the way I'd like it to.

Hello, I am interested in re-creating PF's Speed By Surface operator in Box3 so that I can (a) see whether it might be made more efficient in Box3 and (b) modify it to my liking. I found it very easy to create a Speed by Nearest Vertex operator. But a Speed By Surface is looking like it will be quite complex. Instead of vertex normals, I'd be dealing with face normals. And I'd need to take the group of all faces that can be seen by the particle (face at least partly towards it) and average all of their normals, and apply that to the particle. Can this be done? If so, can you give me a general idea how? Thanks! Fred Lewis

I have always assumed an Accel vector is the change in the Speed Vector magnitude over time, but with Box 3 I'm starting to have second thoughts. What is a propper description of each in Box 3?

Hi, I wonder - how could a faloff map's distance to object feature be used with distance to particle? This could be employed to create some very nice effects! Thanks, Hristo

I'm having an odd reaction to modifying transform data on an object that a Data Operator is referencing. For example, I have a Data Operator that calls an Object and Geometry sub-operator on a Sphere. With the Source disabled and/or the Data Operator disabled, I get this massive slowdown when I try to keyframe postion/rotation/etc on the sphere. It's as if it's still calculating the entire flow internally as I make changes.

Hi! Now, I have the following problem: I am trying to make two flows interact. The scene is basic, all I try to do is to send particles to a new event, when they get near a particle from the other flow. My data test is simple, too - I use 'select object' to select the other pflow, then 'particles' to get the distance, and then a 'condition' for the threshold, and then a 'test out'. It all woks fine, when the test is applied to only one of the flows. but when I try to apply it to both (which creates inter-dependency), the following thing happens: When I turn on 'independent pflow system' (reference says you have to use it in such cases), I can't select any of the flows, as if they are filtered from selection. I tried to apply caching to them, but it doesn't help. Any solution, or a workaround for making inter-dependent flows? Thanks, Hristo

In the future, it would be nice if the Display Data operator by default would let you display any of the Input Standard channel data instead of having to first put the data in a custom channel and reading it back in.

What's the story with the Mass channel on InputStandard? I can't get it to do anything, but perhaps I need to fill this channel with a value first? I was thinking that maybe this was automatically calculated based on particle geometry.

I've been experimenting with the Particles sub-operator and haven't been able to get the Density method to return any value other than zero. If I make the Vacinity Radii large enough I should be getting values consistent with the number of particles within that bounding volume or am I just going about this wrong?

Hello, I'm trying to experiment with Box3, and was wondering if there's a way to use the Data Operator to effect the influence of a given force over an individual particle, or small group of particles. Specifically, I'm trying to simulate "eddies" of wind within a single wind force, or vortex. Turbulence force isn't really getting me what I want. I've just begun to experiment with Box3. <edit> I should add that I've tried various combinations of adding speed vectors based on particle neighbors/distance, but I was wondering if there is an easier/more efficient way. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks! m

I've always kind of shrugged at the Function: AND sub op. If you have two conditions, lets say Age > 40 AND speed > 30 you need to satisfy why wouldn't you pump the condition one directly into the second. I mean, you don't do an AND operator every time you start with 'New in event'. Could someone explain the benefit of the AND operator over just stacking them? Khye

http://www.darkform.net/testfiles/b3_test.zip Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? My goal with this (my first test with b3) is to replicate something i was doing with a scripted operator. Basically I am looking to place a particle on a selection of scene geometry. So I have about 6 objects in the scene and I'm birthing 6 particles at frame 0. With this I would expect my custom data operator to do this, however to get a particle for each of the scene objects, I am having to bring my birth-count up to roughly double the target scene geometry count... In other words, I have 6 objects in my scene, I have to set my particle birth to 11 to ensure that I have a particle assigned to each of the 6 objects. I'm using Input[BirthIndex] and an ObjectSelector[MultipleObjects] piped into an Object node. In the Object node, I have Object TM selected. For the data wiring I have I3 selected with the BirthIndex being piped in through there. My sample file is very simple (about 4 nodes) so I'm sure anyone that knows what they're doing will quickly identify what's going wrong with my setup. Thanks for looking :D .jeremy

Caching of Particles is the bane of my existence. OK, not really but close! I'm wondering if the Cache to Disk in the new Box3 really improves life? If I understand correctly, there is a separate cache file for each frame? Can the net render slaves read the cache files from across the network as required? Thanks!

I was surprised to find the Shape was not in the standard output. I would suspect it would work with an O input . . . Khye

I'm curious... I remember reading somewhere on the forums here that Box#1 has memory management going on, and Box#3 has more memory management. Now, if I only own Box#3, does that mean that I'm not getting as much in terms of memory management as I would if I had both Box#1 and Box#3, i.e. does Box#3 kind of 'override' the memory management of Box#1, or would it be worth it to pick up Box#1 for the memory management as well? -Chris

How can I add particles to the surface of other particles?

I'm trying to get the number of particles form a particular event - not the whole flow. Edit: I should specify I'm trying to input the number of particles from event 2 into event 1. Khye

Oleg, it gets pretty repetitive when you're creating the Output New subops for the particle spawn data ie Current Parent, Current Spawn, Parent ID . . .etc. Initially I thought it would be helpful if you checked one and you chose which output sub op that it would auto rename it to the spawn data label. Then I thought it would be even cooler if there was a button at the bottom of the list that said, " Generate Output Channels" so that any output channel that was checked but wasn't assigned a sub op would be created, linked and named. Khye

The tutorial is here: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=736 Thanks, Oleg B.

Anyone know a way to get the position of particle index (i-1) in box3? edit: Just found Input Proxy . . .EXACTLY what I needed. Sometimes I think you've thought of everything. racked Khye

I was trying to deconstruct the log spiral and saw that some of your mathematical functions didn't have inputs but were still giving values and weren't color coded to be unlinked: [img]http://www.khye.com/box3/pflow_box3_noInput_noProblem.jpg[/img] Can you explain? Khye

Hey PFlowers, I just wanted to say I'm loving Box 3, though I'm still pretty useless with it. My major stumbling block is the function operator. I really just don't know what any of the options here mean. I find myself just scrolling through them to find one which does what I want. I know this is my fault for not paying enough attention in maths, but I wonder if another couple of pages in the help file might give a description of what these odd words mean. Oleg in a recent post described Orthogonolize (though it still sounded pretty complex!), and I just assume I'm not the only one suffering here. At least, I really hope I'm not the only one! :oops: Thanks Z.

Hi there, I'm having difficulty getting Box#3 to see the license server over a VPN. I'm connected through the VPN, I'm able to remote desktop to the server, access it through explorer, ping it, etc., but the Box#3 plugin doesn't seem to see it. Any tips or suggestions? Thanks, Chris P.S. Is this type of question better suited for support@orbaz.com, or is the forum an acceptable place to pose the question?

Can you explain what this function does? I'm not familiar and I've seen you use it twice so it must be useful.

I'm sure this is really easy but I cant quite make it work. I want a data flow, which sits after a position object, to orientate particles to the normal of the closest surface point. So if the object is a sphere, and the particles are set to birth on the surface of that sphere, they all rotate to follow the surface normals. I can achieve this effect using Speed By Surface set to parallel to normals and set speed once, then a speed space Rotation, and finally a speed set to zero. But Box 3 must be more efficient and slicker! Come on Oleg.....(or anyone elso :wink: ) Thanks Z.

Hello there, I'm trying to set up some sort of level of detail thing for my particles. Basically, it's 20000 particles bouncing around within a volume. The problem I'm having is that my particles aren't always updating to show all of the particles in the system. Most of the time all I can get are the Far Particles--which are just spheres, not instanced geometry. Attached are images of my particle view and the data view for the MiddleTest--the NearTest and Far test are the same with just the conditional changed. [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/699450/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/699450/ParticleView.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/699459/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/699459/MiddleTestDataView.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/699435/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/699435/DataChannelsDataView.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/699694/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/699694/PsychRender_01242.jpg[/img][/url] Also, it seems to be very instable--it crashes often, and not from memory overload as far as I can tell (i.e. it doesn't tell me it couldn't allocate enough memory). After doing some more testing, I realized that my camera was on a frozen layer, after moving it to the same layer as the particle system, the particles will simulate fine, at least. Now the issue still stands about it constantly crashing. -Chris

Having spent the last year working 100% hardcore in Houdini, I feel like I can safely say that the best way to describe Box#3 in Houdini terms is "A combination of POPs and VOPS." POP are Particle Operators, discreet particle-based operations used a the Particle level in Houdini (outside of object and surface operations). POPs works similar to PFlow in that you have your Source, apply forces, create attributes, etc. VOPs are VEX Operators. VEX is the core underlying 3d language of Houdini outside of HScript. VEX applies to all levels of Houdini and is used to perform a myriad of function. VOPs is a visual framework to program VEX. It works very much like [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=694&start=1]Data View[/url] in that you fetch variables, perform functions and export values/parameters and can encapsulate them into operators or tools. So if anyone asks you "What's Box#3 like?" just say "It's like POPs and VOPs in Houdini, but inside of MAX."

I missed the memo--what happened to the old Box#3 Forum? -Chris

Is there a floor operation? I can't seem to find it anywhere. Khye

Interesting example done by Jeff Lim (a.k.a. Galagast) ANIMATION: (with and without PWrapper) [img]http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/images/20060718/gluey_test_anim.gif[/img][img]http://www.geocities.com/jeffdavidlim/files/pflow/gluey_test_pwrap_anim.gif[/img] DATA FLOW: [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/images/20060718/gluey_test_dataflow.gif][img]http://www.geocities.com/jeffdavidlim/files/pflow/gluey_test_dataflow_thumb.gif[/img][/url] FILES: MAX8 [url=http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/scenes/20060718/Gluey_Test.zip]gluey_test.zip[/url] 27KB Jeff's description: "What I did was first get the initial locations of the particles... then do a "push" effect using closest points on particles detected inside the moving object. As with the Point Normal subop, im not sure if I did it correctly, I was after a push in the normal direction of a particle's closest point. Then lastly, I set a speed for the particles to return to thier origianl positions, thus thier speed was defined by how far they are from thier initial position, creating a slowdown effect."

Playing with a demo for a couple of hours - and it looks really great! Interface is really nice, as always ;) All this small colour things, icons, automatically conv-operators - it's so cool! I'm having a couple of questions. Will be there additional tutorials and other materials on this subject? Because native help seems a bit too minimal :) It would be nice to see some advanced examples of Box#3 usage with at least general explanation. Also, I'm having some minor problems with Data Flow View window refreshment. When I'm creating empty window and selecting an empty place in it - I can see artefacts from buckets. Similar things can happen even if a couple of Data Flow operators will be added. [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/632952/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/632952/artefact.jpg[/img][/url] Also, it looks like not all of Preset icons are on their places (comparing to illustration from Tutorials): [url=http://upload4.postimage.org/633092/photo_hosting.html][img]http://upload4.postimage.org/633092/artefact2.jpg[/img][/url]

Could the object operator have an integer input which would select which object to output from a multiple item list? Khye

[color=blue]Since [url=http://www.orbaz.com/download/index.php]demo version[/url] of PFTools:Box#3 differs from the [url=http://www.orbaz.com/buy/index.php]commercial one[/url], please mention what version you are using when making a post. It can be done by using different prefixes in the topic subject: [b]CV[/b] for commercial version and [b]DV[/b] for the demo[/color] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The reference documentation is on the large side, so here's some highlights about the plug-in. Particle Flow Tools: Box#3 includes the following new operators and tests: [b]Data Operator[/b] - the main operator of the package. 'Edit Data Flow...' button opens Data View - the main interface to manipulate the particle properties and data. [b]Data Icon[/b] - variation of the Data Operator that has visible 3d icon in viewports, and options to choose the type and the size of the icon. The operator has an extra sub-operator Icon that the regular Data Operator does not have. [b]Data Preset[/b] - when this operator is drag-and-dropped into the Event Map, you are given the list of presets that were saved with the data operators. The list includes only the presets that were made with either Data Operator or Data Icon. [b]Data Test[/b] - similar to the Data Operator but in the form of a test. It has an extra sub-operator Output Test that the regular Data Operator does not have. [b]Data Icon Test[/b] - data test with an icon. It has all the sub-operators, including the Output Test and Icon. [b]Data Preset[/b] - the test version of the Data Preset operator. The list of this Data Preset includes only the presets that were made with either Data Test or Data Icon Test. [b]Cache Selective[/b] is a cache operator with the option to exclude some particle properties from caching. The overall cache size can be significantly reduced by excluding the Shape data, for example. To make up for the absence of some properties in the cache, the Cache Selective operator has an option to run some operator in a post-cache process. This way one can save cache without the shape data but force a Shape operator to run afterward, and only in the current frame, without the need to run the Shape operator in every frame preceeding the current one. [b]Cache Disk[/b] - similar to the Cache Selective operator but with the option to keep the cache data on the disk in files (a file per frame). [b]Data Display[/b] shows, in the viewport, numerical data created by a Data operator or test. Besides the operators, Box#3 includes numerous sub-operators that can be wired together in [i]Data View[/i] to define particle data flow in a Data operator - [b]Amount Change[/b], [b]Condition[/b], [b]Convert[/b], [b]Function[/b], [b]Geometry[/b], [b]Icon[/b], [b]Input Custom[/b], [b]Input Proxy[/b], [b]Input Standard[/b], [b]Notes[/b], [b]Object[/b], [b]Output Custom[/b], [b]Output New[/b], [b]Output Standard[/b], [b]Output Test[/b], [b]Parameter[/b], [b]Particles[/b], [b]Pipe[/b], [b]Random[/b], [b]Scale[/b], [b]Select Object[/b], [b]Switch[/b], and [b]Vector[/b]. Particle data modification is not an easy subject, and there are several example scenes included with the package - see the folder <3dsmax_root>/scenes/ParticleFlowTools. Here're highlights about some of them: [b]EventCounter[/b] and [b]ProxyHeight[/b] - how particle systems can communicate with each other. [b]SpidersForCaching[/b] - good testing ground for cache operators. The scene is very hard to cache with the standard Cache operator because of the cache size. With the Cache Selective operator it is possible to exclude the Shape data from the cache, and add the Shape Instance operator as a Post-Cache operator. With the Cache Disk operator it is possible to keep the whole cache on the disk, a half-MB cache file per frame. [b]ProxySpeedInfluence[/b] - another example of how a particle system can grab data from a different particle system. [b]SizeByColor[/b] - the size of particles is controlled by the texture. [b]BloodMoon[/b] - just to avoid the questions how the BloodMoon animation was done. The example is not a simple one, and it is not recommended for the beginners. [b]Color3DGradient[/b] - The Geometry suboperator has Point Color 3D Gradient option. It uses a 3D procedural texture to drive particle animation. It is possible to find the gradients in the 3d texture (vector from darker areas to the lighter ones), and use it to push particles in that direction. Once they reach a certain level of white, they rest. [b]ColorGradientOnObject[/b] - Same idea as above but particle motion is restricted to the surface of an animated object. [b]MappingGradient[/b] - The mapping info is used to drive particle speed. Since mapping is usually desribed by three values U, V and W, you need some kind of a mask vector to define what mapping values are important for you. For example, to drive particle animation by the U value, you should use vector [1, 0, 0] as a mask. [b]ConvertRollPitchYawToQuaternion[/b] - rotation is a difficult subject. Rotation can be expressed as rotation around an axis by an angle, or by euler angles, or by Roll, Pitch, Yaw angles. For the later please look at this topic: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=197 Box#3 works with rotations as quaternions, and all operations are done this way. You have a bunch of options to convert to quaterions, and this scene is just one example. [b]RollPitchYawDisplay[/b] - example on using rotations and the Data Display operator. [b]RotationVariation[/b] - another example on dealing with rotation animation, and time shifting. [b]SimpleSpawn[/b] and [b]SimpleSpawn2[/b] - examples on how to make a simple Spawn operator. [b]SpawningParticlePerVertex[/b] - the data operator shows how to generate the number of particles to match the vertex count of an object, and place them at vertices. [b]Random Walk[/b] - the example shows the usage of the custom data preset Random Walk. The data preset is similar to the Random Walk space warp available from Blur. [b]Suction Hole[/b] - the example illustrates usage of the custom preset Suction Hole. You can read more about the example here: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=171&start=10