I’m starting to implement Xmesh here and I’m trying to get a sense of how I can manipulated and use the files after their cached and leverage the product. I’d like to be able to put arbitrary channel data into the mesh files. That would allow me to drive textures or control objects for emitting fume or particles. For example the animators cache out the character with a gun prop. They’ve animated a fire control. However the FX artist is going to set up the tracer fire and impact system. It be cool to cache out the emitter object with a channel that drives on/off of the fire controller and maybe the rate of fire. This might be a better job for the prt file, but loading the channels into thinking particles or Pflow doesn’t seem possible right now with either cache format. Ideally it be cool if you could apply a modifier to the mesh loader which allows the user to see and use the channel information like any other controller. You could possibly store the translation information to objects so that if you wanted to attach objects later in the pipe you could or just cache out simple objects and connect more complex object still being worked on.
John K
Hi John,
With the current system, one could use the up to 100 mapping channels to store arbitrary data per vertex (or per face, assuming all 3 vertices of a face have the same value) in the XMesh sequence. That data can be converted to more usable form using a Vertex Color map. For example, the Vol.Select modifier of Max could select vertices or faces based on the Vertex Color map reading from any Mapping channel… You can also turn Material IDs to face selection using the Vol.Select modifier.
Ultimately, we also dream of a Geometry Channels Modifier that would allow the same workflow Krakatoa provides with PRT streams and MagmaFlow. We used to have a prototype of such modifier, but I don’t think there is a clear roadmap for it right now. Given that it would be amazingly useful for both XMesh, Frost and just pure 3ds Max workflows, it is on top of my personal Wishlist for future development.
Thanks for the feedback!
How do your write the channels to the format? I don’t see any option in the Mesh Saver
If you build it, they will come. 
If you add a mapping channel to the geometry, XMesh Saver will save it out automagically.
For example, create a Teapot, drop a UVW Map modifier and set to Mapping Channel 10.
Save to XMesh. You will get both “TextureCoord” (mapping channel 1) and “Mapping10” saved.
In PRT and XMesh, “TextureCoord” is the name of the UVW channel 1 because that was the original mapping channel of Max 1.0 before the Vertex Color channel (called “Color”, equivalent to channel 0) was added in Max R2 and before the other 98 channels (“Mapping2” to “Mapping99”) were added in Max R3.
We did not add controls to disable the saving of used mapping channels because we figured that if it was there, you probably needed it for something…
Cool I’ll try that out thanks