I can’t get the KCM Interactive mode to work with 1.5.2.40961. We’re trying to do some things like camera distance fogging and clipping, but when we scrub through the timeline, the camera moves, but the particles don’t update. Hitting update works ok though. I have “Load Single Frame Only” on, so that may be defeating it, but I just wanted to check, as I THOUGHT this was working as I expect, but couldn’t be sure.
When “Load Single Frame Only” is checked, the stack does not get an update because the PRT Loader base object has cached the particles and its validity interval is assumed infinite. You can force an update by using Custom Range with the same first and last frames instead which will reload the particles on each frame and thus force an update, but that will slow down the playback as the particles will be read from disk again and again.
Currently, the “Interactive Mode” gets notifications when an object is changed interactively within the current frame (in other words, a WHEN construct is called).
There is no TimeChange notification built in, so the KCM gets updated whenever the stack gets reevaluated.
A cheeky way to defeat this is to add a dummy Bend modifier to the TOP of the stack after the KCMs and animate its Angle value from 0 to 0 over the scene animation range. No Bend will be applied, but the validity of the stack will be broken and the KCMs underneath will refresh on playback even if the PRT Loader is set to “Load Single Frame Only”. I know it is a hack, but I hope it solves your problem for the time being.
I might add a dummy animation track to the KCM which would get keyframed when “Interactive Mode” is checked and unkeyed when it is off. Have to see if that will force an update…
I tried and it worked. In the next Beta, checking Interactive Mode in the KCM will force an update of that modifier even if “Load Single Frame Only” is checked.
Thanks for noticing!