i have a problem with Frost.
I did a water sim in realflow and exported the particles as BIN/prt files.
those bin files I load into max with the PRT-loader from krakatoa.
This loader is then meshed with frost.
so far i think it is a normal way to do it.
the thing is that my simulation doesnt start at frame 0…it starts at frame 100.
my frame range in 3d studio max is set to 100-177 ( for which i have all bin files) and i network render frame 100-177.
Nevertheless, I get an error message “Splash01_0000.prt does not exist”.
This message only appears when sending this file to network rendering. when opening it in MAX it has no errors and also renders from frame 100 till 177 without errors.
Any idea how to solve this? it seems to me that it is frost which is causing the problem, because when I disable FROST and only have the prt-loader active, i dont get any errors during network rendering. seems to me that the loading process is correct and only starts at frame 100…
In Frost (or if you are frosting a PRT Loader, in the PRT Loader), check the option “Limit to Custom Range”, then press the “Range” button below to set the start and end to the actual frames that exist. This way, any attempt to load a frame outside of the range will return the first or last frame (or nothing if the range limits are set to “Blank” instead of “Hold First/Last”.
This is because when Max loads a scene, it evaluates it on frame 0 for internal reasons. So while the renderer might not try to load frame 0000, Max itself does (the same is true for XMesh and is a cause of pain on the network unless the Custom Range is set).
Hope this helps. If it does not, please let us know.
yes we tried with the custom range and like i said the PRT loader doesnt error. It sesms that frost, regardless of the range in the PRT loader evaluates frame 0, but only when rendering through a network renderer. I dont see a “limt to custom range” in frost
Well check again if really all loader are set to “custom range” AND “HOLD FIRST”. Maybe that helps…
What we did now is, we clones framé 100 to frame 0-99 so we dont get any errors. thats not the best way, but a nice work arround, that at least enables rendering.
Frost has a “Limit To Custom Range” if you are loading the file sequence directly without a PRT Loader. (Basically, Frost has a Particle Files rollout that replicates the PRT Loader’s functionality for people who don’t have Krakatoa installed.) So if you pick the sequence there, it should work.
